Ink | Pen | Paper

With Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the seventh Star Wars film, showing in the cinemas, I see my Facebook newsfeed awash with Star Wars related posts from both friends and some advertising and promo sites. One would also see a vast number of Star Wars related memorabilia and items, such as toys (action figures, lightsabers, Millenium Falcon replicas) to fashion items such as hoodies, T-shirts and so on, and there are also movie tie-in comics and books. All this being shared by proud owners on their Facebook walls. It’s almost as if these people are trying to say, “See? I’m a Star Wars kid! I’m a dyed in the wool Star Wars die-hard since I was 8 years old!”

Well, I personally don’t own a lot of Star Wars related mementos and collectibles. However, I did see the original Star Wars: A New Hope in the cinema, back in 1977. My parents took me to the movie house with them to see the movie, and it forever etched a deep and lasting memory in me. I was just six years old then, but I remember the experience vividly, as if I watched it with them yesterday. Star Wars is partly responsible for my fascination and interest in things related to space exploration and technology, and I’m thankful that my parents were also geeky about it in a way, and allowed me to join them in seeing the film.

One day, a few years later after seeing Star Wars, my father came home with a gift. It was a Pop-up Book featuring Star Wars. The following images you will see are of the book, but our copy, while still in existence, is already quite battered and worn, so I won’t be showing our actual copy of the book. These images are of the same book (taken off Amazon.com) to give you an idea what the book looks like.



Basically, it tells the story of Star Wars, but in a very abbreviated fashion; only a very basic summary of events, with a “pop up” scene depicting memorable scenes found in the movie. The reason why it was called a pop-up book, is because a Star Wars spaceship or vehicle would suddenly “pop up” out when you open a page, making it almost like a 3D representation of the scene.

This is the opening page, and it shows the Rebel Corvette being chased by an Imperial Star Destroyer, both spacecraft appearing to float or pop out of the book (this particular book is also showing signs of its age--the tab on the left is supposed to be attached to the Star Destroyer, but it appears to have been detached or torn off).



Here we see a Jawa Sandcrawler popping up from the middle of the book. It’s quite a feat of origami, how the makers of this book designed the pop-up mechanism. Aside from the pop-ups, one can also find “interactive activities ” on the pages. On the right side you can see an image of R2D2, which you can push up, acting out how he got sucked up via vacuum into the crawler, as seen in the film.



What is Star Wars without an X-Wing Fighter? Here the pop up X-Wing graces the middle of the page. As a kid, I would open up this page, then “fly” the X-Wing fighter around the living room.


Every time I go back home to our cottage at MSU Marawi, I always try and find the book, and browse the pages; it’s like talking to an old friend. Doing this ritual brings back so many vivid memories of childhood.

Even though we Herrera kids didn’t get to own a lot of Star Wars stuff, we can really say that we are in fact, Star Wars kids. This simple little book is testament to the fact that we became fans way before most of other people became followers of this venerable sci-fi (or space opera, to be more accurate) series and franchise.