TWENTY years ago, while browsing in an antiques store near Phoenix, Ellen G. K. Rubin, a book collector, spied something intriguing at the top of a rickety shelf. It was a pop-up book, “Moko and Koko in the Jungle,” that had been opened up to reveal a stand of banana trees, more than a foot tall, teeming with animal life.

It was a densely populated scene. Near a river, the jungle sheltered an elephant, a rhino, a giraffe and a zebra, his striped rear end visible as he disappeared into the trees. Lions, a male and a female, lay in repose. Atop the forest canopy, a chimpanzee solemnly ate a banana. Against towering coconut palms, a white European boy, in an off-the-shoulder animal pelt, and a black African boy, in a skirt made of brightly colored feathers, stood like sentries. It was an entire world pressed between the pages of a book.

This was Ms. Rubin’s introduction to the work of Vojtech Kubasta (pronounced VOY-tesh ku-BASH-ta), a Czech architect, graphic artist, children’s book illustrator and master of the pop-up book. In his heyday, in the 1960s and ’70s, his ingeniously engineered books were translated into dozens of languages and read by millions of children around the world. British children knew him as the author of a series of pop-up books featuring Tip and Top, two boys who put together a car from scratch (“Tip and Top Build a Motorcar”) and traveled to outer space (“Tip and Top on the Moon”). In the United States, he was virtually unknown.

“I decided that I would collect everything he ever did,” Ms. Rubin said. “Now I realize how naïve that was, and I have to laugh. This could be the most prolific artist who ever lived.”