Brian Selznick's "Wonderstruck"

The Invention of Hugo Cabret was already a favorite in our family, and the movie Hugo cemented my fanship. So we were pretty excited to get started on Brian Selznick’s latest illustrated novel, Wonderstruck.

Wonderstruck takes the interaction between great story and wonderful illustration that was the joy of Hugo Cabret to a new level. Rather than illustrating the story that he is telling, in Wonderstruck Selznick writes one story with words and writes another with the illustrations that are interspersed in the pages of words. In the words, a young boy in the 1970s has lost his mother and is searching for information on his father. In the illustrations, a young, deaf girl in the 1920s runs away from home.

The two stories, separated by time and place, eventually become intertwined in surprising and satisfying ways. Lots of twists and turns in the story kept us eager for the next pages. Selznick proves that his creativity has not reached its limit, and I’m excited to see what he does next!

I read this one aloud to my 8 year old. She was breathless each chapter, wondering when she would get to revisit the illustrated storyline; she could hardly stand to put the book down each night. There were a few moments, as Ben searches for clues about the father he never knew, that made me wonder if this book would be the prompting of an explanation of the birds and the bees to my daughter. That did not come to pass, mostly because she didn’t want to stop reading to ask questions.

There are sensitive portrayals of the challenges of being deaf. And Selznick is clearly fascinated by museums and collections. In the endnotes, he mentions that credit is due to the book From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg, which is a book I remember from my childhood with great affection. He also mentioned that there are many tributes to that book placed throughout Wonderstruck. So what else was there to do but pull out Frankweiler and read that one aloud next? We are about three chapters in.