Celebrating a century of the Light of Learning

Pennelly is celebrating 100 years in a big way. An enormous pop-up book, the biggest in the world, something you have to see to believe. Fox 11's Christy Fajardo is there now live to show us. Christy. Yeah, Christine, the Central Library has been welcoming visitors for 100 years. And if there wasn't enough to gaze upon in this beautiful rotunda, take a look behind me. As you said, they have installed the world's largest pop-up book. It's all part of celebrating a century of the light of learning here at the library. A good book inspires all, but a new book at the LA Central Library honors kids and the kid in us all. It's an amazing experience, plus the space just really adds to it too. It's Luceros y Penumbras, Stars and Half-Life, and it's the world's largest pop-up book. So big, it takes 10 people to turn the page. The name, the animals, and the symbols were inspired by the stories LA-based printmaker Daniel Gonzalez heard from his grandmother in Mexico. When we would go to visit her as kids, there wasn't many toys, but there's a lot of stories. The pop-up books are both toys and stories, and the Central Library has more than 2,000 of them. That's why the Library Foundation of Los Angeles got the idea to do this for the library's 100-year celebration. This is made from all the same materials of a traditional book or pop-up book, paper, adhesive, and fabric, that's about it. It took an artist, a paper engineer, and fabricators eight months to create, and getting it into the rotunda was no small feat. The tree alone is 11 feet tall. It was built off-site in a fabrication warehouse and had to be moved into this building, so it fits in this room, but it can't come through any of our doors or up the stairs or elevators in one piece. Now patrons of all ages take pictures of a pop-up replica of the library surrounded by a field of stars, sparking imagination and giving visitors a photo and a story to share. And this exhibition reminds us that each person is a library, and cada cabeza es un mundo, or every head is a world, and this is what it looks like right now. It is two pages, and it will be flipped to this. We're told that it's such an undertaking, though. They're only going to do it once a month, and the installation will be here through mid-November. Live at the Central Library, I'm Christy Pohart, and I'll send it back to you. That is so great. I grew up on the library. I still want to go down there and take my selfie with it. That looks really neat, very creative. Thank you. You definitely need to. All right, thanks.