Dr. Suess; Pop-ups by David A. Carter.
The Lorax is one of my favorite books from Dr. Suess. Obviously, he was ahead of his time, creating an story warning about ecological concerns way back in 1971. His conservation message is just as relevant, and possibly more pressing today than it was forty years ago. This pop-up edition is just more fun.
This is the story of an entrepreneur named the Once-ler, who discovers the Truffula Trees (whose tufts are softer than silk and smell of fresh butterfly milk) are a valuable commodity. He starts whacking them down at breakneck speed, using the tufts to knit his products. The Lorax, a shortish, brownish, oldish fellow, implores the Once-ler to acknowledge that other animals are depending on the Truffula Trees, which are disappearing at an alarming rate. The trees may cannot speak for themselves, so the Lorax must be their voice.
When the very last tree eventually falls, the forest is bereft of life and smog fills the air. The factory sits empty and the Lorax has disappeared. One Truffula seed remains ... waiting for the person who with the ability to protect it from the axes that hack.
Pop-up books always seem like a treat to me. This one has a large main section that leaps off the top of each page, plus flaps to open on the sides with tiny moving parts. My favorite is the wheel on page two, where a spin causes two little Humming-Fish to leap from their pond. The whisper-ma-phone on the first page is pretty good too, a nice job of making that three-dimensional.
My only complaint is how small the font is. I know the story is long, so it was necessary to make the font fairly small just to fit the whole thing in, but the selected size makes it a bit hard to read. The words on the white sections are fine, but I found myself peering at the ones printed on the green and blue sections.
Review copy provided by Random House.
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