Run Away With Me

Run Away With Me written (and illustrated) by Brian Selznick (Scholastic Press) HB RRP $34.99 ISBN: 9781339035529

Reviewed by Kellie Nissen

Where do I start with this book?

Run Away With Me is young adult fiction but it was Brian Selznick’s black and white illustrations that hooked me first. Pages and pages of them – featuring the architecture and scenes of Rome – before I even got to the written narrative. Illustrations that told a story before the story began.

Sixteen-year-old Danny is spending his summer in Rome. He’s been there before. In fact, he’s been in so many places that he hardly knows where ‘home’ is, such is the life of a child whose mother is a book conservator who must move to where the work is around the world.

This summer is different though – full of magic and mystery … and love.

Danny is a little lost. Never anywhere long enough to make firm friends, he tends to wander the streets to kill time while his mother works. But then he meets Angelo, a boy full of secrets and intrigue. They spend every day together as Angelo introduces Danny to Rome’s hidden history, and they develop a special bond.

This is queer fiction for young adults at its absolute best. It’s both gentle and slow, and tense and exciting. Like a picture book, the illustrations tell half the story, and you can be excused for losing yourself in them for hours on end.

While the central theme of Run Away with Me won’t be for everyone, it does offer a sensitive window into another world for some of us, while for others it offers a mirror, allowing them to see themselves in a beautifully rendered story.

There are other elements too – the detail about Rome’s history and culture, and a step inside the world of book conservation.

I absolutely loved this book for its unique approach and beautiful multi-modal storytelling. A must-read for this age group and beyond.

The Marvels

The Marvels by Brian Selznick (Scholastic Inc)

HB RRP $34.99

ISBN 978-0-545-44868-0

Reviewed by Jenny Heslop

The Marvels is one of the most beautiful, satisfying and absorbing book I have had the pleasure reading in a long time. The unusual format - the first half is told entirely in pictures, the second in prose - was the first surprise and had me instantly hooked.

Exquisite black and white illustrations fill the pages with such detail and life that I forgot I was not reading words. The occasional newspaper headlines or theatre bill helps keep this illusion while providing any additional detail such as dates and names.

This illustrated first half tells the tale of Billy Marvel, the only survivor of a shipwreck in 1733, whose stories inspire the painting of the ceiling in a new theatre being built in London. Billy makes the theatre his life, and so too do the generations after him, until one year disaster strikes the lives of all.

The second, seemingly unconnected, story is entirely told in prose.

This tale takes place in 1990 when Joseph runs away from boarding school to take refuge in the home of his mysterious Uncle Albert. This house is the most astonishingly unconventional home Joseph has ever been inside and he is determined to get to the bottom of his Uncle’s strange behaviour.

The shift from illustration to text is not as unsettling as I expected it to be. The prose is just as beautiful as the illustrations, providing imagery as effortlessly as the illustrations prove ‘words’. Also, by the time I had reached this midpoint, I was so involved as a reader that the change in form seemed a natural expression of the shift in the story’s focus.

Reading The Marvels is a rich experience. Even holding the heavy hardback volume with its gold edged pages seems like the beginning of a journey. Go with it!

Shipwrecks, high theatrical drama, family tradition and conflicts, this is a book to be savoured. Don’t let the size put you off. Once the pages are opened any reader will be enchanted, drawn into the story, and not want it to ever end.

This is a marvellous read for those as young as nine or as old as ninety.

Brian Selznick is the bestselling author of The Invention of Hugo Caberet and Wonderstruck.

Wonderstruck

Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick (Scholastic Inc)

HB RRP $34.99
ISBN9780545027893
Reviewed by Dawn Meredith

It’s 2:47am and I’ve just finished reading Wonderstruck. I couldn’t put it down. I had to read it all in one sitting. To hell with work the next day! I fell in love with Selznick’s debut novel, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, #1 New York Times children’s bestseller and winner of the 2008 Caldecott Medal among countless other awards. The 3D movie, Hugo Cabret, is due for release in 2012. I didn’t think it would be possible to produce something better, but this book captured me from the very first page.

The simplicity of the dialogue and uncomplicated style belies a complex criss-crossing web of emotions and unresolved conflict, exploring themes of struggle with identity, the meaning of family, modern attitude to marriage and children, friendship and loneliness and courage. So many aspects of human existence are touched upon in this book! It’s like an encyclopaedia, a reference book, available for children and their parents to explore together. A book of gifts. 

As with the first book, the drawings are spellbinding and tell great chunks of story just by themselves. Selznick is so clever in his ability to show a reader how to be an interpreter of visual imagery not just a reader of words. And this seemed particularly apt as the story centres around two main protagonists who are both deaf, for whom visuals are everything. I liked that juxtaposition. The grainy, black and white illustrations of this 460 page volume draw us in, mute, but with astonishing storytelling power.

The two stories involve Ben, a young boy recently orphaned, who sets out to find his father and Rose, a young girl whose mother was a famous actress and had little time for her daughter. These two characters are separated by time and also modality. Ben’s story is told in words, Rose’s in pictures. Eventually we find Rose is actually Ben’s grandmother and they meet in the present day. Ben follows a trail of clues to the city’s museum where he meets a young boy, Jamie. Homeless, Ben stays hidden in the museum for days. But it’s in those days that he gradually uncovers a secret.

Like unfolding layers of silk around a treasure, Ben realises the mysterious man from this very museum, Daniel, whose portrait is inside his mother’s locket, came to his home town by the lake to do research. And fell in love with Ben’s mother.  But just as Ben makes this amazing discovery he realises that his legendary father died. I had held my breath, hoping for the best outcome, but no. It was devastating to me, as reader, that Ben be denied his father, after longing to meet him his whole life! But with childlike acceptance, Ben keeps searching, following the clues, until he makes a delightful discovery which brought tears to my eyes – his grandmother Rose. A new chapter begins in Ben’s life—a sense of belonging, an intimate family connection, a place.

Perhaps more than anything, this book does not seek to shield children from an uncomfortable truth – that life sometimes contains sadness and regret that we do not have control over these things and that other joys may await us if we have an open heart and an inquiring mind. The delights of the old exhibits in the museum, the beautifully crafted cabinet, the ‘Wonderstruck’ in which his father displayed fabulous items and many other joys made this book fascinating to me.

It’s nice to think that out there somewhere, despite the loneliness and isolation of our individual journeys, that there is a warm soft place to land. Like a long-lost grandmother.

Dawn Meredith writes from the Blue Mountains and is a May Gibbs Fellow 2011. You can follow her exploits at www.dawnmeredithauthor.blogspot.com