Visually stunning, completely compelling, Wonderstruck demonstrates a mastery and maturity that proves that, yes, lightning...
Brian Selznick didn't have to do it.
He didn't have to return to the groundbreaking pictures-and-text format that stunned the children's-book world in 2007 and won him an unlikely—though entirely deserved—Caldecott medal for The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Weighing in at about two pounds, the 500-plus page tome combined textual and visual storytelling in a way no one had quite seen before. In a world where the new becomes old in the blink of an eye, Selznick could have honorably rested on his laurels and returned to the standard 32-to-48–page picture-book format he has already mastered. He didn't have to try to top himself. But he has. If Hugo Cabret was a risky experiment that succeeded beyond Selznick and publisher Scholastic’s wildest dreams (well, maybe not Scholastic’s—they dream big), his follow-up, Wonderstruck, is a far riskier enterprise. In replicating the storytelling format of Hugo, Selznick begs comparisons that could easily find Wonderstruck wanting or just seem stale. Like its predecessor, this self-described "novel in words and pictures" opens with a cinematic, multi-page, wordless black-and-white sequence: Two wolves lope through a wooded landscape, the illustrator's "camera" zooming in to the eye of one till readers are lost in its pupil. The scene changes abruptly, to Gunflint Lake, Minn., in 1977. Prose describes how Ben Wilson, age 12, wakes from a nightmare about wolves. He's three months an orphan, living with his aunt and cousins after his mother's death in an automobile accident; he never knew his father. Then the scene cuts again, to Hoboken in 1927. A sequence of Selznick's now-trademark densely crosshatched black-and-white drawings introduces readers to a girl, clearly lonely, who lives in an attic room that looks out at New York City and that is filled with movie-star memorabilia and models—scads of them—of the skyscrapers of New York. Readers know that the two stories will converge, but Selznick keeps them guessing, cutting back and forth with expert precision. Both children leave their unhappy homes and head to New York City, Ben hoping to find his father and the girl also in search of family. The girl, readers learn, is deaf; her silent world is brilliantly evoked in wordless sequences, while Ben’s story unfolds in prose. Both stories are equally immersive and impeccably paced. The two threads come together at the American Museum of Natural History, Selznick's words and pictures communicating total exhilaration (and conscious homage to The Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler). Hugo brought the bygone excitement of silent movies to children; Wonderstruck shows them the thrilling possibilities of museums in a way Night at the Museum doesn't even bother to.
Visually stunning, completely compelling, Wonderstruck demonstrates a mastery and maturity that proves that, yes, lightning can strike twice. (Historical fiction. 9 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-545-02789-2
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2011
Seekers of ghostly shivers should probably look elsewhere.
Ghost dog, stray or wolf? What lurks down the trail to Dorothy Creek?
With her mother working in Japan, 12-year-old Anita and her younger brother, Jack, must accompany their writer father on a research trip to Alaska to study human/dog relationships for a new book. It looks to be a lonely two weeks until Tee hits it off with Quin, daughter to Dad’s local research assistant. When Tee tells Quin about a spooky encounter she had with…well, something near a dilapidated cabin in the woods, the two decide to investigate to see if it’s the legendary ghost dog or just some stray. When dangerous weather traps them, who (or what) will save them? In Kimmel’s slightly eerie dog tale, the chills are mostly weather-related. Not too surprisingly, there’s also quite a bit of dog lore. Tee’s problems with her absent-minded father and rambunctious brother lend a sturdy realism to the characters and the story; occasional chapters from the point of view of a local dog trainer who was a girl in the late 1960s detail the truth that sparked the ghost dog’s legend. All ends are tied up a bit too neatly, and the sap runs too thickly (and sweetly) at the close; dog lovers likely won’t mind.
Seekers of ghostly shivers should probably look elsewhere. (Adventure. 9-12)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-39127-6
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A potentially fascinating story of the survival of a powerful, sustaining human spirit is too often bogged down by an...
During the French and Indian War, Native Americans capture two sisters, 12-year-old Barbara and 9-year-old Regina, from their frontier Pennsylvania farm.
The sisters are separated within days of being taken captive. The third-person narration follows Barbara: her long overland journey, then her life as a captive and eventually, an almost fully accepted member of the Allegheny tribe. Having never given up hope, after three years, Barbara and three other teens flee, embarking on a perilous 200-mile-long escape across the Ohio River and back to the safety of Fort Pitt. From the outset, this tale reads almost as a parable, the introduction intoning, "a handful of families came to dwell there. They lived happily in harmony both with God and man—even with the Indians." Because of its relative brevity and the sometimes distancing didacticism of the narrative, the full impact of Barbara's trials is often blunted. Although Native Americans are sometimes sympathetically depicted, they never become much more than pidgin-speaking cardboard characters. A final moral/religious lesson in the form of Barbara’s later reaction to a good-hearted potential suitor seems superfluous. I Am Regina (1991) tells the same story, more sympathetically.
A potentially fascinating story of the survival of a powerful, sustaining human spirit is too often bogged down by an intrusively preachy narrative voice that never trusts readers to draw their own appropriate conclusions. (Historical fiction. 11-16)Pub Date: Dec. 26, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-310-73053-8
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Zonderkidz
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2012
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