Here are the various stages of creating the die mold.  Thin bands of metal blades are bent by hand and pounded into grooves cut into a wooden block.  Imagine a huge cookie cutter having the shape of all the pieces of the book!

This is the fully automatic die cutting machine where the printed sheets are fed in, stamped with the die mold and then stacked in large piles.

Workers using pliers will tear away chunks of the die-cut sheets in an activity called scrapping.  The pop-up pieces are attached to the sheet by very small sections of paper to make sure the pieces don’t separate and make a mess.

All the pop-ups are constructed in an assembly line of many workers (sometimes up to two thousand!) seated at long tables.  There is constant training by supervisors who observe the progress, as well as examples attached to boards around the plant.

Each worker is responsible for only a few steps of the total production.  Through repetition they become masters at assembling the pop-ups and work at dazzling speeds, creating thousands of pop-up books in a single day!

When all the pop-ups are glued into the spread and all the pages are glued together into a book block, it is time for the cover to be attached.  The cover is printed, mounted on sturdy cover boards and allowed to dry before this final assembly.  At this stage the book is checked one more time for any defects before it is packaged and shipped off to the publishers and stores,

After passing through the massive machines and thousands of hands our T-Rex dinosaur is ready to roar!  So next time you pick up one of our books, remember how much work went into making it for you to enjoy.