once upon a workbench...

Minerva McGonagall

Paper engineer for children's books · Bath, UK
minerva.mcgonagall@example.com
01225 555 0148
minervamcgonagall.example.com

I fold, cut, and score paper so that flat pages stand up and move. Over 9 years I have engineered pop-up mechanics for 34 published titles, most of them for readers under 7. I keep the paste on the paper and mostly off my hands.

And then she built...

the work, page by page

Foldwell & Sprocket Books · Lead Paper Engineer

Bath · 2019 – present

  • Engineered fold-out and pull-tab mechanics for 22 titles, with a combined print run of 610,000 copies across 4 languages.
  • Cut average pop-up assembly time on the factory line from 41 to 26 seconds per spread by simplifying a 6-piece parallel fold to 3 pieces.
  • Trained 5 junior engineers on scoring, tab-and-slot layout, and the dummy-to-die-line handoff.

Marigold Lane Studio · Paper Engineer

Bristol · 2016 – 2019

  • Designed 9 pop-up spreads for a bedtime series that sold 88,000 copies in its first 18 months.
  • Built the paper prototype for a 360-degree carousel book that later won a regional bookmaking award.

Hatch Print Workshop · Junior Maker

Bath · 2014 – 2016

  • Hand-assembled dummy books for client pitches, roughly 15 per month, and logged which folds survived a toddler test panel.
  • Kept the guillotine and scoring bench calibrated to within 0.3 mm across 2 years.

Pull the tabs to see...

what she knows and where she learned it

Toolkit

tabs you can actually pull

V-fold mechanics Parallel folds Pull-tab & slot Carousel books Die-line drawing Bookbinding Adobe Illustrator Grammage & grain

Learning

the early pages

  • BA (Hons) Illustration, Bath Spa School of Art, 2010 – 2013. Final project: a 5-spread pop-up on tide pools.
  • Short course in movable book history, Riverbend Guild of Bookmakers, 2017.

The last spread

a few things worth pinning to the wall

Selected titles: The Owl Who Forgot the Moon (2022, 6 pop-ups), Nine Little Doors (2021), Under the Bath Bridge (2020).

Talks: "Making paper stand up," a hands-on session for 40 primary-school teachers at the Bath Book Fair, 2023.

Volunteering: Runs a monthly paper-folding table at the local library. Roughly 120 children have taken home a wonky pop-up card so far. A few even stood up.