Wednesday's for Kids XIX -- POP-UP BOOKS

Forget 3D or "Real-D" (whatever that means) movies or television, or even stereoscopes (though stereoscopes are, admittedly, really dang cool); instead go for the real thing and get a POP-UP BOOK!  Sure, they over-simplify the classic stories they attempt to retell (at least when they interpret classics like The Jungle Book or Alice in Wonderland (significantly less so, as it so happens, with The Little Prince)), but they offer engaging introductions to these stories, and whether re-tellings or original creations they are both beautiful and terribly fun.  A word of caution, however: Do not leave them with unsupervised under-fours (or so).

For parents (or anyone else):  While pop-up books are a great window to literature for children, they're also made for and targeted at adults (some favorites or mine, though not "pop-up books" per se, are the books of the Griffin and Sabine series by Nick Bantok, which are absolutely gorgeous and feature letters, envelopes, and postcards removable from their pages and so yet 3D, to a degree, nonetheless).

• The Little Prince, story by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
• The Castaway Pirates, by Ray Marshall
• Alice in Wonderland, story Lewis Carroll; pop-ups by Robert Sabuda
• Flying Machines, by Ib Penick
• The Jungle Book, story by Rudyard Kipling; pop-ups book by Matthew Reinhart