Selznick uses the museum as a way of exploring these ideas, which emerge in ways that make sense to children and to which they can relate.Īccessible, eye-opening and involving, Wonderstruck races along, ensuring we always want to know what happens next. Rose and Ben share more than their DNA – there are objects that link them, too, and the safekeeping and passing-on of memories and meanings is another key theme of this book. At last their stories become one and we discover the profoundly satisfying way in which they’re linked.Įven though we know Selznick planned every aspect of this book’s construction, these clues and connections still strike us as wonderful coincidences. Both children’s stories take them to the same museum, where their paths weave in and out until the years between them seem to be collapsing. Following an accident, he, too, is deaf – the first of many connections between himself and Rose. But Rose is deaf, and Lillian isn’t pleased to see her out alone.įifty years later, Ben is also making his way into the same city, searching for a father that he’s never known. Determined to gain her independence, Rose sets off to find her mother, who’s starring in a New York show. It’s 1927 and the talkies are transforming cinema. Rose’s mother Lillian is a filmstar whose career has taken her a long way from the house where Rose is dreaming of escape. One tale is told via conventional text, but the other unfolds entirely in black-and-white line drawings, one per spread, with rapid page-turns giving the impression of a silent film – an appropriate medium for a book in which absence of sound is such a major theme. It’s actually two stories, set fifty years apart, and much of it is illustrated. This doorstep of a book hides an exciting secret.

Explore the Wonderstruck Museum and find out what links Ben and Rose

Wonderstruck book online