Newberry Library’s new exhibit features books that pop up out at you

From black-and-white calendars printed on vellum to this colorful animal scene, “Pop-Up Books through the Ages,” now on display at the Newberry Library, 60 W. Walton, explores the world of books with pages that fold out, turn, open, shift and move. (Photo by Neil Steinberg)

We didn’t have kids, yet. So with plenty of time to burn, my wife and I sat on the sofa and worked through Nick Bantock’s “Griffin & Sabine,” the 1991 illustrated novel whose love story unfolds, quite literally, in a series of postcards and letters.

I admit that “Griffin & Sabine” has not come to mind much in the third of a century since. Not until recently, when I found myself strolling with the curator of rare books and manuscripts at the Newberry Library, Suzanne Karr Schmidt, through the exhibit she created, “Pop-Up Books through the Ages.”