Summary: More coffee table book than interactive guide for kids, the Pop-up Tour de France book is a nice decorative addition to the collection of a bike racing fan. Knowledgeable Tour watchers will find nothing new in the book, but this makes a fine guide to have out during your Tour watching parties.

Rating: 3/5

Price: $36

With the Alps in full swing and the Pyrenees waiting just ahead, the Tour de France has reached the meaty stage. Gone are the long flat days of hours of watching intrepid breakaways attempt the rare feat of out running the sprinters teams to the finish and waiting to see the inevitable crashes. Now we have a dwindling number of true contenders battling it out on the mountains for victory in Paris. These are the days where you might actually get your non-cycling friends to come over for a beer and watch a stage (if you are smart you’ve recorded the live broadcast of Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin avoiding the clunky “enhanced” coverage of Craig Hummer and Bob Roll and ever douchey Michelob Ultra commercials.) For your uninitiated friend, the Pop-up Tour de France book is a perfect primer to answer many basic questions about how the Tour works while you make the nachos.

Pop-up books are mostly the purview of children’s books these days, but one should not mistake the Pop-up Tour de France for anyone younger than 10. While the pop-ups and fold outs are well designed and executed (the fold out of the final day on the Champs Élysées is especially cool) they can not hope to keep the attention of a child while you read the long and encyclopedia-like explanations on each page. On the other hand, those who regularly watch the Tour will find little they don’t already know about the Grande Boucle. So that leaves us with an audience of adults who are unfamiliar or recently exposed to the Tour de France. Those folks will find this book informative and fun to flip through. Unfortunately, those particular readers will probably not think to buy this book or if they do will likely balk at the coffee table book price.

This leaves us with the dedicated Tour watcher who wants to avoid having to explain all the ins and outs of the race to their friends (but really what are you going to be doing for the 3-4 hours it takes to watch a stage? Even the best stages have LOTS of down time in which you could, you know, interact socially with your guests.) Those having Tour watch parties or just wanting to collect all things Tour de France will find this to be a nice edition to their collection.