One of the most intriguing selections from the 2014 Mark Twain Award nominees is Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick. With his first, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Selznick broke new ground, and with this second offering he stretches his writing style even more. There are over 600 pages in this book, but with 460 full-page illustrations, this is actually one of the shorter books on the list. That said, the story does not move forward and makes no sense without the illustrations. Like Hugo, Wonderstruck's illustrations lure the reader into the novel and explain important events that are not included in the text. In fact, the illustrations tell the story of one of the two main characters while the text tells the story of the other.
| From the Wonderstruck website, the following is a synopsis of the story: A boy named Ben longs for the father he has never known. A girl named Rose dreams of a mysterious actress whose life she chronicles in a scrapbook. When Ben discovers a puzzling clue in his mother's room, and Rose reads an enticing headline in the newspaper, both children set out alone on desperate quests to find what they are missing. With diligence, one may read this entire book over a single weekend. If a student reads (or is read) as few as four of the Mark Twain Award nominees from the Missouri Association of School Librarians list, s/he may officially vote to help determine the 2014 recipient of the award. |
