For the past two decades, The Movable Book Society has honored the very best in paper engineering through its Meggendorfer Awards program. This page lists all the winners of the top prize, with links to the finalists for each year as well. 

The award honors Lothar Meggendorfer (1847-1925), a legendary 19th-century illustrator and movable books paper engineer. Meggendorfer created over 100 pop-up books, employing pull-tabs and rivets that caused several actions at once on a page.

Every two years, one paper engineer wins the Meggendorfer Prize “for the most outstanding commercially published pop-up or movable book”. This is the highest award for paper engineering, and these books are always beautiful, creative and very collectible. The criteria for the award include originality, artistry, overall text and functionality, and how well the movable mechanics work. Innovation and integration of the pop-ups into the story are also considered, along with its overall appear. Best of all, because the award is for commercial titles, you can usually find them easily and afford to add them to your collection (at least, while they are still in print…). As well as the list of winning books, there are links below to the finalists for each year, all of which are also amazing (I don’t envy the judges having to choose between them).

The Movable Book Society also awards prizes for Artist Books and emerging student designers, but these awards are generally for one-off designs that are not typically accessible to the public.