They're not just for little kids anymore, as this pop-up paddle-wheeled riverboat demonstrates.

When they open the cover of "America the Beautiful," Sabuda's paper version of the Golden Gate Bridge springs up in all its 3-D glory. At the front of the two-page spread, tiny white boats unfold on the blue-green water: a sailboat, a ship, two boats in between.

In even the least intricate of Sabuda's stylish designs, more than a dozen bits of paper unfold into an astonishing and wonderful view in white upon a colored page.

There's Mount Rushmore, with a bison in the foreground and a mountain goat on a crag in the background. Another page opens to reveal the rock houses of Mesa Verde, with birds flying up from the bushes.

That one appears to be the most complex, but it's the Mississippi River sternwheeler that is most delicate. Closing that page too quickly, without making sure the steamboat is folding smoothly backward — it might need help with a gentle pull on its reinforced center sternwheel piece — will damage it irretrievably.

The riverboat, according to Little Simon, is the most complex bit of paper engineering Sabuda has ever done.

Jaws drop. Eyes widen. "Wow!"

Then, "This isn't for kids!"

Although published by Little Simon, a children's book imprint of Simon & Schuster, this is no board book with simple, sturdy flaps and pull-tabs.

It's labeled "not suitable for children under 5." But if "America" is given even to older kids, it's likely to be with some trepidation, and faint hope that it will last long enough for the parents to enjoy, too.

The text is the lyrics of "America, the Beautiful," written by Katharine Lee Bates a century ago.

The illustrations are as ardent a hymn to America as the poem. There is humor — a cow pokes her head out of the barn behind the "amber waves of grain," and a dog chases a cat chasing a duck in the front of the field. But it is belief, not irony, that couples the pop-up of the U.S. Capitol with the line, "And crown thy good with brotherhood."

The final page has a two-page spread of the Statue of Liberty and a miniature eight-page booklet with seven more verses and four more pop-ups.

"Architecture Pop-Up Book" by Anton Radevsky; Universe, $39.95

Florence Cathedral, or Santa Maria del Fiore, is one of the featured images in Anton Radevsky's "Architecture Pop-Up Book."

There also are plenty of small flaps — for instance, an exterior view of the Temple of Hons in Karnak, Egypt, is on a flap that lifts to reveal a cutaway view of the temple — as well as unflapped illustrations.

Add text to describe everything, and the layout gets crowded and the print small. But when you're covering everything from Babylonian ziggurats to the Guggenheim museums in both New York and Bilbao, Spain, there's plenty to fit in.

Some of the models are so complex or big that the reader has to help assemble them. For instance, Notre Dame's towers are in a pocket that slides out from the left edge of its page; in addition, the arc of buttresses at the back pulls around to be held together by Velcro tabs. It's fun, with a fair amount of "wow."

"The White House: A Pop-Up Book" by Chuck Fischer; Universe, $35

First ladies are celebrated in "The White House: A Pop-Up Book," by Chuck Fischer, who notes that each woman has distinguished herself.

"The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon: A Pop-Up Book" by Stephen King; Little Simon, $24.95

"The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon" may appear to be for a young audience. But the story, Stephen King's young-adult novel stripped to short-story length by Peter Abrahams, is not for anyone prone to nightmares. Nor are Alan Dingman's illustrations, made 3-D and often animated by paper engineer Kees Moerbeck.

It's about a 9-year-old girl who gets lost on the Appalachian Trail. She nearly starves. She gets pneumonia. She hallucinates that her hero, pitcher Tom Gordon (then of the Boston Red Sox), is with her — and that the God of the Lost, with fangs, huge claws and a face of stinging insects, is after her.