This book is hillarious! The pop-ups are excellently done, and the accompanying text adds to the scary joy. The "nightmares" explored are as follows. You find yourself in class for the final exam for which you forgot to study, with the stern exam administrator looming over you ready to snatch your paper! You're driving on a mountain road, and come around a sharp curve to find a huge truck coming at you! You are falling down endless staircases; or you open your refrigerator to find it infested with rodents. And then there's the "haunted bedroom" nightmare, the "falling through ice" nightmare, the "naked in public" nightmare (you're at a ball park, no less!), the "being chased by wild dogs" nightmare, the "apocalypse" nightmare....

The pop-ups are what make this book; they are rendered with great skill and imagination, turning each nightmare into a 3- dimensional experience. And then the text -- mock Freudian analyses, that "explain" each bad dream. Every "thing" symbolizes something else -- fears, obsessions, anxieties, phallic symbols, and shameful desires -- all presented in authoritative - sounding psychological mumbo-jumbo.

I had lots of fun with this book, and so can you. Just don't read it right before bed. ( )

hee hee hee hee. It's fun. It's worth having around. ( )

Companion to The Pop-Up Book of Phobias, this has wonderful interplay between the flat art work of Rubess and Reinhart's pop-ups. My favorite is "falling", which features an awesome spiral staircase.