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
The series keeps cruising along…though iffy casting may be an early sign that it’s losing steam.
In a new caper, the Spy School team thwarts a fiendish scheme on the high seas.
A fresh chance to catch up to world-class gourmand and perennial foe Murray Hill plants dogged CIA junior agent Ben Ripley and associates—including markedly more competent classmate Erica Hale and her equally able mom, Catherine—aboard the Emperor of the Seas, the world’s largest cruise ship, for a fresh round of ridiculously destructive chases, startling twists, and repeated attempts on the hapless young spy’s life that are somehow always averted in the nick of time. Along with adding a grandfatherly, eco-conscious Costa Rican drug lord to the supporting cast, Gibbs flirts with stereotypes by trotting in, among the few characters who don’t at least present as White, a Chinese teen given to muddling her English idioms, her bling-loving mother, and a chipper shipboard event manager of Australian Indigenous descent. Still, the revved-up plot will leave readers as breathless as Ben is in the wake of a final, unexpected turn in his relationship with Erica. Finally, finally nabbing the slobby supervillain (at least for now) as well as saving the lives of hundreds of oblivious, hard-partying onboard tourists must count for something.
The series keeps cruising along…though iffy casting may be an early sign that it’s losing steam. (Thriller. 10-13)Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5344-7943-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Another reliably eerie outing from a master of under-the-sheets reading.
Terrified children find the borders between bad dreams and reality breaking down in this stand-alone screamfest.
Stine kicks off what he dubs in his introduction an “Everything Scary Story” (inspired by eating an everything bagel) for middle graders and their parents, “who read my books when they were kids!” He throws in a cheery evil laugh—“Mmmmwahahaha…!”—before launching into a four-part story that packs a creepy old house just off Cthulhu Street that serves as the main setting with all the stuff of nightmares from his considerable arsenal. In short chapters alternating between two equally surreal storylines that may each be a dream of the other, he chucks in an impressive array of disquieting tropes and elements—ranging from spooky creaks and howls to purple worms emerging from noses, a mom who sells crocheted body parts online, teachers in “weird animal masks,” and classics like evil toys and an ominous message scrawled in blood. Even though the point-of-view characters are in a constant state of round-eyed terror, this outing is plainly meant to be in fun, and aside from being splashed with hot green vomit or spending a little time as ventriloquist’s dummies, none of the young people here suffer actual harm from the cascade of supernatural threats, for reasons the author explains at the end. The cast presents white.
Another reliably eerie outing from a master of under-the-sheets reading. (Horror. 9-12)Pub Date: Feb. 17, 2026
ISBN: 9798228588301
Page Count: 214
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
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