The Peekaboo Industrial Complex

Friday morning, my 1.5-year-old, whom we call J around here, crawled into my bed with a copy of “Where’s Spot” by Eric Hill. It’s one of over a dozen adventures for Spot, a puppy whose curiosity is rivaled only by his creators’ interest in cashing in on his popularity. Spot’s stories are hide-and-seek odysseys; he’s always searching for something or forcing his parents to search for him. In “Where’s Spot,” his mom can’t find him, so she searches all over the house until she finds him in a basket. The end. It’s cute and it’s brainless, and it led me to the subject of this week’s newsletter.

“Where’s Spot” is a lift-the-flap book, and if you believe its website’s peacocking it’s the “original lift-the-flap book.” It’s not, which we’ll get into, but it certainly started a craze. I’m drowning in lift-the-flap books at home -- “Where is Baby’s Belly Button?” “100 First Words,” “Dear Zoo” et al -- and they’re all part of what I call the Peekaboo Industrial Complex, a class of books, shows, and toys that goes way beyond stuff that’s explicitly about peekaboo. Consider the PIC to be inclusive of any media that leverages kids’ love of the big reveal. In this genre, the anticipation is as much fun as the resolution. The best stuff, though, figures out how to make the mechanics of the reveal something special too.

Let’s start with the basics and get more complicated from there. Of the explicitly peekaboo media in my life, “Peekaboo Morning” is the crown jewel. It’s a gorgeous, painterly board book by the artist Rachel Isadora that’s pitched to kids still learning how to say “mama,” “dada,” and the like. The story, such as there is one, is straightforward enough: Baby goes around the house playing peekaboo; baby is delighted when baby is peekabooed.

Upon my 124th reading, I picked up on a subtle mechanic that elevates the way it tells its story. Every set of pages ends with “Peekaboo! I see…” and the reveal doesn’t happen until you turn the page. By structuring the book this way, it becomes its own game of peekaboo. When I’m reading each page to J, my voice draws out the “I see…” to build the tension, and then my voice kicks up an octave when the surprise comes. (It’s grandma! And she’s holding a … frog?!?)

In a way, every picture book is its own game of peekaboo. A closed page is a veil covering the unknown, and lifting it can bring anything into the world. While we’re reading board books, J loves to grab hold and flip the page back and forth, amazed that there’s something different on each side. How can it be so different yet be part of the same cohesive whole?

Lift-the-flap books like “Where’s Spot?” are just an extension of this dynamic. Why be asked to turn the page when you can lift a page placed on top of another page? This is not a new idea, no matter what Eric Hill and his publisher wants us to believe. Books have been playing peekaboo for centuries, and not only for kids. Some of the first documented books that added extra elements to the page were anatomical texts so readers could lift the flap and look inside the human body. The Newberry Library in Chicago did a retrospective on pop-up books recently, and it featured some wild examples, including a lift-the-flap joke book from 1899 that changed characters’ faces, a movable cutout in a 16th century astronomy reference book, and a pop-up version of Pinocchio from 1932.

The problem with the lift-the-flap books of the late 20th century is they’re made for people who want to destroy them. Nearly all my lift-the-flap books are missing a flap or two, because when you show an infant that something moves, they want to touch it, and when they touch it, they grasp it, and when they grasp it, they pull it, and who thought this was a good idea in the first place? (Eric Hill, apparently!) Our copy of “Where’s Spot” has the last two flaps taped on with what appears to be industrial-grade duct tape.

That’s why I was so impressed when I came across publisher Nosy Crow’s approach to lift-the-flaps. Its dozens of lift-the-flap books (“Where’s the Tiger?” “Where’s the Digger?” “Where’s the Doctor?”) are somehow even simpler than “Where’s Spot?” Each has five items that need to be found, ends with a mirror so kids can stare at themselves, and contains illustrations by Ingela P. Arrhenius that are bright, flat, and legible. The books’ innovation is technological: all have felt flaps instead of paper ones, and they seem practically sewn into the book. Even J, who is a bowling ball of a child, can’t dismember these flaps. That makes the reveal even more joyful -- she gets to see what’s behind the flap, and I don’t have to micromanage her tensile strength.

Just because a kid grows up doesn’t mean they’re done with peekaboo. My 4.5-year-old, N, is still drawn to media that plays with the idea of visual surprise. I’m not talking about those YouTube videos where kids just unbox toys for hours at a time (though I would be if she knew they existed), but instead the traditional TV she’s drawn to. We’re deep in a “Gabby’s Dollhouse” phase — though if a phase lasts more than a year is it actually an era? — and each episode of “Gabby” begins with a small, delicately crafted box sliding down a chute toward Gabby. Inside is some sort of surprise that sets Gabby and Pandy Paws off on their adventure. When she’s watched a couple episodes and I ask N to turn off the TV, one of her favorite bargaining tactics is to say she doesn’t have to watch a whole new episode, she just needs to see what’s in the next box. Who am I to deny her that reveal?

But Gabby’s peekaboo pales in comparison to the deranged Netflix program “Is It Cake?” a reality show that wonders what would have happened if Erwin Schrödinger liked dessert more than cats. 

Each episode, the contestants are asked to identify whether a household object is actually cake and to make a cake that looks like a household object. The results are legitimately stunning, nudging food into an uncanny valley where mouths don’t know whether to water or go dry. Have you ever wanted to eat a framed facsimile of the Mona Lisa? Of course not. But would you if you knew it was made of cake?

N’s favorite part of the show is the first act, when the contestants have to decide what item on stage looks normal but is actually a moist impostor. After they make their selections, the host, Mikey Day from “Saturday Night Live,” walks around with a knife and puts the contestants’ guesses to the test. But before Day brings the knife down, he says his catch phrase -- “Is it cake?” -- and hovers over the item. 

The anticipation builds. 

The knife comes down. 

The flap is lifted.

The page is turned.

All is revealed.

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I asked N what she feels right before the knife cuts into the objects, and here’s what she said: “Excited because I wonder if it’s rainbow cake or pink cake or purple cake or orange cake or rainbow cake or silver cake or yellow cake or white cake.” If you’ve ever thought this newsletter might be overthinking things, there’s your evidence.

I’d love to hear about the Peekaboo Industrial Complex books littering your house. Leave your favorites in the comments! 

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If you’re new here, peekaboo! Glad to have you with us, and maybe think about subscribing? This newsletter is basically a mystery box sliding into your email every week. I wonder if Gabby subscribes…

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