Thank you, making the hands unfold is a good idea. It's got me thinking.
In the end, with this idea, I moved on to a different visual with the tunnel books (I had to make some objects for a show) and made tiny diorama paper theatres (with surreal characters with peonies and birds for heads). They worked well in practice but weren't particularly exciting.
I made the palms into an accordion book, which worked practically but not conceptually, and I like your idea of having the palms open out to show the fortunes. It's made me also think of whether I could print the fortune on glassine paper, interleaving the palms. And a different idea around palms opening might be a flicker book. There are so many plays on hands that would be cool in a flicker book.
Anyway, thank you very much. You have returned me to thinking about this, which is good as I still need to make something for ethelzine pretty soon, and the theatres are fine but not 'wow'.
Sarah-Jane
And here are some other cool paper tunnel books (none of them have text, though, to the best of my knowledge)
https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/paper-peepshows