Book Review: Peculiar by Stefan Bachmann

First of all, this wins the award for most misleading cover ever. It suggests a light, steampunky, adventure sort of book; the color-scheme and overall goofiness of the metal bird says there might even be puns.

Peculiar is dark, dark, dark. When the back cover suggests that changelings (halfbreeds) should hide lest they get hanged? It means it. This is the sort of world where kids are hung, where a woman is possessed by a dark, nasty sort of fairy and made to kidnap children, and where the faeries have neither forgiven nor forgotten the not-so-long-ago war they fought with humans.

Bachman knows how to keep a reader's attention, and I'm not at all sorry I read Peculiar, but it isn't the book to listen to while falling asleep that I had expected.

Peculiar is the story of a young half-human, half-faerie boy who has been living in hiding all his life; changelings aka peculiars have very short lifespans if discovered by most full-blooded folk of either species. He's been taught that safety comes from not being noticed. Then his sister is kidnapped, and he sets out to hunt her. At the same time, Arthur Jelliby, a nice young man with lots of wealth, a beautiful wife, and a comfortable political position, finds himself overhearing secrets that make him very uncomfortable, being asked for help by beautiful women, and generally ending up acting like a hero. Both of them risk rather nasty deaths and face some thoroughly desperate, very determined opponents.

Bachman is good at world building, creating a land where faeries and humans live together in uneasy peace, where there are regular precautions against magic but where it creeps in at odd moments anyhow.

The prose is mostly good, and the majority of the descriptions are evocative. The Prologue is nicely chilling, with the Bath being destroyed in a night. "There were no flames. No screams. Everyone within five leagues disappeared" and the city is left a ruin, starting a war "called the Smiling War because it left so many skulls, white and grinning, in the fields."

There are, however, the occasional clunkers such as "the word fell like a furry ball to the floor" or "The word flittered up the staircase, through the silent passages..." which served to effectively yank me right out of the book and set me to wondering how words could be like balls of any sort and whether the words flew on bat or butterfly wings and which would be more efficient and other such imponderables.

There are also bits of the plot that made me as an adult ask questions but might not bother a middle-grade reader. My biggest question was: Why haven't these people cooked up some good birth control? Peculiar makes it clear that it's not a matter of whether a changeling child will die but when--one family has seven children; six are hanged, one is kidnapped. Both humans and faeries find the children revolting, so you'd think that either the faeries or the humans would have come up with a way not to have them.

And, yes, it bugged me that the half-fairy, half-human children were called changelings, though there is a sentence sort of hand waving this. On a more nitpicky level, it also bothered me that the protagonists bought and ate food (bad pies, at that!) at the Goblin Market without ill-effect and that, later, one of them drinks tea in a faerie's home, and one refuses, and it doesn't matter. Traditionally, eating and drinking fairy food is a Bad Idea, but it doesn't seem to be in Peculiar

On a larger level, though, Bachman is very, very good at atmosphere. His Faery-haunted world is pretty scary, and there are lots of nice touches, like the possessed woman's clothing slowly deteriorating as she isn't caring for it any more or the way church bells are now ringing every five minutes in an effort to keep fairy magic from working around the towns.

Also, the main villain's plot makes sense. He has a very good reason for his schemes and is being quite methodical about getting what he wants. He's not quite human sane, but he shouldn't be, so that's just as well.

Bachman follows two protagonists, altering between Bartholomew and Arthur Jelliby quite deftly. The two different points of view--adult (ish: Arthur has to do a lot of growing up here!) and child make for a good pairing, and the chapter breaks and shifts in view keep suspense going quite nicely. Also, like the villain, the heroes have good, solid motivation and both grow into the role of hero quite satisfactorily.

Peculiar isn't a perfect book, but it's a book I quite enjoyed reading--or rather, listening to. I'm not sure about the audience: Some middle-graders would enjoy it, some might find it far too dark. I suppose it's a matter of "read the prologue and decide from there." As for adults, some may be able to forgive flittering words for the sake of smoky cities and creepy, plotting faery people, some might not.

I'm sort of at the mid-point myself, but I do have The Whatnot, the book's sequel, on hold at the library.

Oh, and the audio version has some very good music to it, including a good, long stretch at the end by Bachmann himself.

Publication Details
Published September 18th 2012 by Greenwillow Books
ISBN: 0062227696 (ISBN13: 9780062227690)
series: The Peculiar #1

Additional Reviews and Pages
Stefan Bachmann's Page
Lots and lots of reviews found via Fyrefly's Book Blog's Search Engine.

The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani

I love the idea of this book--more than one of the ideas. There is a mysterious school out in the woods that trains fairy tale characters in the ways of Good and Evil. Once a year, two children between the ages of twelve and sixteen from the village are kidnapped and taken there; at the beginning of this book, the chosen pair are Agatha, who wears black and is perpetually grumpy and Sophie, who loves pink and wants to go to the school to find her happy ending. The thing is, they end up in the "wrong" schools, and only their friendship can save them.

Before I get started: Lots of people appear to have liked this book. According to the its Goodreads' page, the book is a "New York Times Bestseller * Indie List Bestseller * Soon to be a Film from Universal Pictures * A Barnes & Noble Best Book of 2013" and etc, so clearly not everyone had the same allergic reaction I did. As for myself, I think I'm allergic.

Problem the first: What friendship? Sophie has only befriended Agatha as one of her "good deeds," and Agatha knows it. She sticks to Sophie more out of desperation than anything else, and this holds true through most of the book--Sophie keeps trying to ditch Agatha, except when Agatha's help is convenient. Agatha never makes any other friends, either. There are people who comment on their friendship, but in action? Not so much.

Problem the second: The book can't really decide how much internal beauty really matters. Oh, sure, Sophie looks good but acts evil (more on that later), but Agatha's "goodness" ultimately manifests in everyone discovering that she was beautiful all along and just needed to smile more, stand straight, and wash her hair. After that, people love her. So much for internal beauty being what matters.

Problem the third: Sophie's evil mostly consists of liking pink, trying to stay beautiful, and wanting to get away from the village. She gives facewash to orphans! The horror! She worries about her weight (gasp!) and so doesn't cook fattening meals to her father (Dreadful!). This, by the by, in a world at least as fixated on beauty and slenderness as our own.

She picks up some more recognizably evil as opposed to purely gendered traits later, courtesy of the school insisting on it (as in, severely punishing people who don't live up to their traits) but... Oh, I get angrier every time I think about Sophie's initial "evil," so I'll stoop now.

Problem the fourth: The book is dull. I started skimming after the first hundred pages or so and never did settle back down or get drawn into it. The behind-the-scenes plotting of the thoroughly pointless teachers and school owner never did draw me in, nor did the sort-of romance(s) that developed. No one other than Sophie and Agatha got more than cursory character development and theirs was, as I've mentioned, thin.

The sequel appears to focus on gender wars. I think...not.



Publication details
Published May 14th 2013 by HarperCollinsISBN 0062104896 (ISBN13: 9780062104892)

Other reviews found via Fyrefly's Book Blog Search Engine

The Literary Omnivore
A Backwards Story--who liked it a lot.
Books with Bite
So I Started Reading
And lots more

Book Review: Princess Ben by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

Princess Ben : Being a Wholly Truthful Account of her Various Discoveries and Misadventures, Recounted to the Best of Her Recollection is the story of how Princess Benevolence learned to become a proper princess and saved her kingdom in the process. Ben is a slightly spoiled child living happily with her parents. Then, they are killed and she finds herself heir to the kingdom and subject to the queen's kill-or-cure re-education and makeover process. She rebels, runs away, and eventually figures out how to actually be a princess.

By the end, it's kind of charming: I enjoy a good tale of hidden passages, mysterious passages, secret magic lessons, and (possibly) dragons. The political intrigue finally comes into focus and starts to matter, and some mysteries are cleared up. There are even hints of an eccentric castle here: The magic room only gives lessons when it wants to, it only lets her open the book to certain pages, and it insists she clean it.

The trouble is Princess Ben spends about three-quarters of the book being a nearly intolerable brat. I knew she'd straighten out eventually, that was the kind of story it is, but she took far too long. Even once she starts learning to use magic, she spends most of the book using it for small, selfish things. I mean, she sneaks around and steals stuff rather than learning useful things. The one Useful Thing she does overhear, she has to have explained to her later in words of one syllable, and even then she doesn't actually do anything about it until much, much later in the book.

I only managed last long enough to reach the charming bits it because a) secret passages and b) It was on my MP3 player and I was busy. Also, I had a hard time believing that the, by all appearances, politically savvy queen could come up with such a stupid re-education program. I could believe in one Ben wouldn't like (there was not much she would like at that point), but not one that featured such an inept tutor.

The pseudo-archaic dialog bothered me too. I can only handle so many inverted sentences at a time, and "wherefore" is not an old-fashioned way of saying "where." It really isn't.

Verdict? Only for the truly die-hard Princess fans. Tuesdays at the Castle is a much better eccentric castle book with a much more congenial set of orphan heirs.

Other Reviews by other reviewers some of whom liked it rather more than I, and some of whom did not:
Teen Book Review
Small Review
Pica Reads
The Story Siren

Book Review: Wednesdays in the Tower by Jessica Day George

Tuesdays at the Castle by Jessica Day George was a tremendously fun book about an eccentric castle and the people who lived in it (see my review here). The sequel, Wednesdays in the Tower, is even better. In Tuesdays, Celie and her brother and sister had to deal with missing parents, conniving councilors, and a takeover attempt by a neighboring prince. They're aided by an eccentric, unpredictable castle who nudges them in the direction they need to go. In Wednesdays in the Tower, the family is back home, but there is now a strange wizard intent on researching the castle, and the castle has presented Celie with a baby gryphon that it wants her to hide from everyone else. The castle's behavior is even stranger than this, though, as it starts adding new rooms in a seemingly arbitrary fashion, puzzling and worrying the Glower family who, in addition to ruling by its grant, love their strange home.

I loved the castle in Tuesdays in the Castle. I think I love it even more now that it's being somewhat selfish, even putting its favorite people in danger. It makes it seem even more real and alive now that it is truly desperate and needs help and, since it cannot communicate clearly, is now being downright manipulative. Part of what makes this appealing rather than evil is that Celie still loves the castle. The other part is that we learn that the castle used to be more, and it's entirely possible that at some point in the past it really could communicate with its caretakers/people/friends so that its current, rather fractured and imperfect method is probably frustrating and worrying it at least as much as it does Celie and her family.

I was slightly disappointed that Lilah, Celie's older sister, got less page time in this book. Mostly, Celie is busy caring for a truly delightful young gryphon and working with her brothers, Rolf and Bran. Bran, Celie's older brother, was absent for most of Tuesdays in the Castle, and I'm pleased to say he makes a fine addition to the sibling group. He's just finished his training as a wizard and is balanced between being an adult and being the familiar older brother. Rolf and Celie are a great brother-sister pair, and Pogue, the blacksmith's son gets an expanded role.

The castle's unpredictable behavior makes Wednesday's in the Tower more of a page turner than Tuesdays in the Castle. While Tuesdays was delightful, and I wanted to see some more peaceful days with the castle, its care for the children meant things were probably not going to get too bad for them. Now, their ally has turned strange, and they are left more to their own devices in figuring things out. Their other opponent here has a more complicated motivation that helps keep matters unpredictable. All of this means that Wednesdays in the Tower is a sequel better than its predecessor and I'm definitely eager for the third book in the series.

Publication Information
Hardcover, 235 pages
Published May 7th 2013
Publisher: Bloomsbury Children's (first published May 1st 2013)
ISBN: 1599906457 (ISBN13: 9781599906454)

Tales from Lovecraft Middle School by Charles Gilman

If you're the sort of person who likes rats mysteriously finding their ways into sealed lockers, thinks a heroic two-headed rat makes a fantastic addition to the cast, finds giant bugs in disguise deliciously creepy, and likes horror with a side helping of humor plus truly courageous and yet ordinary kids for main characters, and if you think throwing in  tentacled monsters,inter-dimensional portals, and secret plots makes things even more fun, then these books are for you.

In Professor Gargoyle Rob finds himself going to a brand new, beautiful school where he only knows a few of them--one of them Glenn, the school bully from his old school. An unexpected encounter with a multi-tentacled monster forces the two to join forces, and they find themselves becoming friends as they try to figure out just who the mysterious Master is and what his plans are. They are joined in the fight by Karina, a ghost now tied to the school, and an extremely intelligent two-headed rat, Pip and Squeak.  It's a delectable little snack with just the right balance of horror and humor.

In fact, it was so delicious that, after I finished gloating a bit over its wonderfulness₍₁₎, I sat right down and read The Slither Sisters at once, glad that for once I had the next book in the series on hand and didn't have to wait₍₂₎.

By The Slither Sisters,  the demonic forces are trying to take over the school by winning the election for student council president--and it makes sense, in context, that other-dimensional creatures are after a middle school. Rob and Glenn are learning the hard way that anyone and everyone might be a monster in disguise, making it hard to find allies in their fight against the otherworldly evils.

In Teacher's Pest, Rob finds he has trusted someone he shouldn't, and now he and his friends have to figure out how to stop his plans to expand the Master's plot to take over the world. Also, there is an invasion of bugs at the school. This time, they are ordinary-sized, but there are gargantuan numbers. Rob isn't sure how they fit the Master's plot, but he knows it isn't good. Trust continues to be a problem, and though he and his allies (including the school librarian, yay!) have found a way to combat the creatures individually, it isn't enough for wholesale combat.

I adore these books. They're perfect slices of fun and spookiness--and, yes, Lovecraftian mythos (The series' title and the mention of tentacled creatures likely gave you a clue or two there). The pacing is perfect, keeping things moving while giving enough information about this strange, spooky world. Also, the characterization is strong. I tend to be a little leery of "the school bully can be your best friend" stories, but there's plenty here to motivate Glenn and Rob's new partnership and move it on into friendship. Karina's a good character, too, dealing with the difficulties of being a ghost, trying to fight the person who is responsible for her death, and dealing with just plain boredom from being stuck at the school alone on long weekends. Pip and Squeak are far more delightful than a two-headed rat ought to be.

Also, the physical books are things of beauty. They are just the right size to hold, and they have covers that change as you move them. On one angle, you'll see the nice, friendly teacher or student. On the other, the darkness below is revealed. I don't entirely like the way these feel to the touch; they're a little unpleasantly scratchy, but the cover illustrations are worth it.

And, of course, there's a great trailer for the series, complete with spooky, Gothic music:



--
(1) I may have hugged the book and done a little jig in the room. There were no witnesses. I definitely have run around telling people about it.
(2) I keep promising myself that I'm going to review series decently and in good order instead of blasting through them. But these were good. Also, they were short. Nice, tasty, snacky things. Just one wasn't going to happen.

Links of Interest
The Lovecraft Middle School website
Professor Gargoyle on Amazon
The Slither Sisters on Amazon
Teacher's Pest on Amazon.
Substitute Creature (coming Sept 24, 2013) on Amazon.
Substitute Creature on the Quirk Books site. You can get a good look at the cover there as it changes.

Book Review: Floors by Patrick Carman

Young Leo and his father are the maintenance crew for The Whippet, an eccentrically designed hotel full of surprises. Not only are the rooms oddly themed (the cake room, the cave room, the room that's a giant pinball machine), and not only is there a duck pond on the roof, there are hidden floors. With its amusement-ride elevators, building-high slides, and an eclectic complement of live-in guests, it's pretty much paradise for a boy. There are only two problems: Leo's father is still mourning his mother and, a more immediate threat, the hotel's owner has disappeared and the manager is aiding outsiders in a hostile takeover.

If he is to save his home, Leo has to figure out a series of odd clues, find unexpected levels to the hotel, and beat a series of strange, and sometimes dangerous, challenges sent through a series of mysterious boxes. He enlists the help of the new doorman, the housekeeper's son, and the two become fast friends as they fight for their home. He's an engaging character, and the story of his learning to make friends and grow is part of the fun.

The breakout star for me was the hotel. The Whippet is a wonderful strange building. Although not sentient in its own right, it was designed by a truly zany inventor and reflects his personality. It is inhabited by designer robots like Blop, a little robot who was designed to socialize and desperately wants to, but turns out to annoy his audience who routinely asks him to be quiet. Probably the person who knows it best is the duck, Betty, who leads her flock, and sometimes Leo, through the chaos.

I am pleased that there actually did turn out to be a reason behind the zany challenges and the cryptic clues. I am growing increasingly impatient with cryptic clues that are cryptic only for the sake of complicating matters rather than because anyone has any reason to phrase them oddly, so this was a plus for me. Other readers may be less concerned about this.

Floors isn't Deep Literature, it's pure, whimsical fun. I recommend it for light reading or for leaving casually lying about for kids (or adults) to stumble upon.

Reminder: Floors II: 3 Below is already out and Floors III: The Field of Whacky Inventions comes out next month, September 2013.

Other Reviews
The Book Zone (For Boys)
Good Books and Good Wine
Literate Lives
The Book Swarm

Links
Patrick Carman's home page.

Floors on Amazon

I listened to and enjoyed the audio version, read by Jesse Bernstein (Hurray for Downloadable audio books at the library!)

Got a review I should link to? Another link I should add to the list? Contact me or leave a note in the comments and let me know.

Book Review: Tuesdays at the Castle by Jessica Day George

Tuesdays at the Castle was delightful.

The kingdom of Glower is an unusual place, one where the rulers are chosen not by their lineage but by the kingdom's castle which allocates rooms and room space based on how much it likes people and has been known to eject the undesirable all together. It's a peaceful place, generally, but now it is running into trouble: The king and queen have been attacked and are assumed dead. The castle, though it appears to still care for the princes and princesses, can't or won't eject the royals and advisers from other kingdoms who have come to "help" run the kingdom while Rolf, the heir apparent, is in his minority. Worse, the royal children find that even their own councilors aren't to be trusted.

I love eccentric, sentient buildings, and the castle of Glower is an excellent eccentric. It never speaks (I'd probably find that creepy), but displays its preferences by providing for those it likes and stinting those it doesn't. It also provides the children with hints and nudges through the supplies it gives them (a phrase book, for example, so they can understand enough to know what their enemies are plotting) and by providing them with a hidden room to hide when their enemies want to use them as hostages. It generally acts as a sort of beneficent, if occasionally baffling, guard and guide, up until the point where it ends up in trouble itself and needs Celie, Rolf, and Lilah to help it.

The Glower children and their castle-aided plans to keep their kingdom were great, and I enjoyed their sibling relationships. They have a good, loving bond, but can also irritate each other, even when the kingdom is in danger, and I found that quite believable. Celie, the youngest, and the castle's special favorite, was especially endearing: She's spunky, inquisitive, and clever, but not so much so that she's unbelievable.

The castle itself is the star though: I'd have loved a few more chapters of ordinary, non-threatened life just to see how it thinks. I'm definitely going to read Wednesdays in the Tower now.

Additional reviews:
Charlotte's Library. I read Tuesdays at the Castle because of her, in fact.
Reviews found through the book search:
Jen Robinson's Book Page
A Patchwork of Books
More through Fyrefly's book blog search.

Other links of interest:
http://www.jessicadaygeorge.com/ The author's home page.
Jessica Day George on Facebook.
Tuesadays at the Castle on Amazon.

Books That Deserve Longer Reviews Part 1

I never stop reading. It'd be almost as bad as ceasing to breathe.

I do, occasionally, stop reviewing, and this means there's a buildup of books that don't quite get reviewed. So, every now and again, I do short reviews, even though most of these books deserve nice, lavish, proper reviews. Also, the library's summer reading program is giving me a help with short-review writing. So--Here's a start on catching up!

Please note: the "Age level" note is "The age the publishers seem to think this book is appropriate for."

Cold Cereal and Unlucky Charms by Adam Rex, the first two books in the Cold Cereal Saga. So far, the series has a movie star, a pooka, a leprechaun, a unicat, an evil cereal company that is trying to take over the world. It has Merlin, Nimue, Titania, and a mechanical owl. It features two sets of siblings that have to stop the evil cereal company and figure out a way to bring magic back into our world without getting everyone killed or enslaved.

It's funny, crazy, unlikely, and sometimes heart-wrenching. Oh, and occasionally it's gross.

Yes, it's good. Very, very good.

I wish I knew how many books were going to be in it!

Age-Level: Middle grade, but that won't stop adults from liking it.
Genre: Fantasy

Superman Beyond: The Man of Tomorrow by J. T. Krul

I used to watch Batman: Beyond with my little brother, and I like J. T. Krul's work, so this one fell off the library bookshelf with no trouble.

It's a good continuation of the dystopian future of Batman: Beyond and a follow-up to the cartoon. Superman is older now, almost everyone he loved has died, and he has come back to Earth after attempting to take a vacation by traveling through the universe. It didn't turn out to be very restful--he's too used to saving people. Now, back on Earth, he's not sure what to do with himself. Meanwhile, and elderly Lex Luthor has planned to take Metropolis and Superman both with him when he dies. At the same time, criminals are fleeing Metropolis for Gotham, which doesn't have either Batman--Terry or Bruce Wayne--happy, so Terry heads out to see what can be done about the situation.

The strong friendship between Bruce and Clark is admirably shown, there's plenty of action, and, best of all everyone involved also has to think, not just punch, their way out of the situation.

In short, it's fine, fun summer reading. I need to see if there are sequels. Do you know, even now, after years of reading and remembering author names, I sometimes forget to look these things up?

Age-Level: Young Adult
Genre: Um...is superhero a genre? (I guess so. Bill Willingham thinks so. He must be right).

Homicide Trinity by Rex Stout (Editor's note: I originally had this as by Nero Wolfe!)

This was quite a discovery! I thought I'd read all the Wolfe novels, and two of the three stories were new to me. "Eeny Meeny Murder Mo," "Death of a Demon," and "Counterfeit for Murder" Archie is in top form here, sleuthing, griping, detecting, and developing a surprising protective streak for the cantankerous elderly Hattie in "Counterfeit for Murder." "Counterfeit for Murder" may be my new favorite in the Wolfe stories; it's not often the two take on a client who can match them in stubbornness.

Wolfe, of course, is busy taking care of his orchids, trying to avoid work, and eating wonderful meals.

Age-Level: Adult
Genre: Mystery

Dandelion Hunter: Foraging the Urban Wilderness by Rebecca Lerner

I like books on urban ecology and I'm becoming increasingly interested in "weeds," so this book was right up my alley in that regard. Lerner decides to live for a time as a forger, eating only the food she can find in the city. Her first attempt to do so for a week failed, but her second attempt, after more time spent researching, interviewing, and traveling with other foragers, was a success. I disagree with about 85% of her philosophy, but that didn't keep this from being a fascinating read. Also, the writing is good: Clear, strong, and often humorous--especially in the footnotes.

Now I want to find someone to teach me to identify weeds!

Age-Level: Adult
Genre: Non-Fiction

I just finished devouring Rick Riordan's books. My review of The Red Pyramid and The Throne of Fire is up here, on The Geek Girl Project. Short version? Yep. They're worth all the fuss, and then some.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret and Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick, a dual review

Thanks to for the Bookphile for bringing The Invention of Hugo Cabret and Wonderstruck to my attention. Both are beautiful, unique works, novels "in words and pictures" as the subtitle to each says.

Each book intersperses the text with several pages of careful cross-hatched drawings and, in the case of Hugo Cabret, pictures from early movies, that continue the story being told in the text. The picture style is cinematic, often zooming in to a close-up over the course of several pages, giving the full panorama before showing the single person or image that matters.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret tells the story of a young boy who struggles to repair a broken automaton his father had found shortly before he died. The boy, Hugo, is orphaned and living in the train station, keeping the clocks going as best he can while he works on his father's find. In order to continue his work he steals clockwork toys from a booth in the train. When he is caught, he is given a job cleaning and working there and begins to form a friendship with the toy-seller's granddaughter and begins to share her love of the movies. Meanwhile, he still needs to fix the mysterious automaton and find a way to live.

To tell more would be to spoil some of the lovely parts of the book. It unfolds slowly to a 99.9% satisfying end.

That .01%? I couldn't quite believe the new automaton at the end. It's a minor matter, and I hate quibbling, but I just couldn't. Not quite. That should not stop anyone from reading the book, however.

Wonderstruck relies even more heavily on pictures than does The Invention of Hugo Cabret. In fact, while it would be just possible to follow Hugo Cabret's story without the pictures, it would be completely impossible to read Wonderstruck without them. Rose's half the story is told in pictures and only in pictures. I felt no lack of words when I was in her world.

In Wonderstruck, the newly orphaned Ben is living with his aunt, uncle, and cousins in their cabin. While there is no lack of love in his new home, he is lonely and grieving for his mother. Finding an old address in a book of hers, the first clue he has had to his father's identity, Ben sets off to find him, taking refuge for a time in an old museum.

Fifty years in Ben's past, Rose watches silent films and clips out pictures of a film star from magazines. Desperate to escape from her over-protective father, who keeps her close because she is deaf, she runs away to the city to find freedom, also taking refuge for a time in the museum.

Wonderstruck is the second of Selzinick's novels in words and pictures, and it benefits from his work on Hugo Cabret. It feels steadier, as though the author is now sure people will follow his work, and he is able to tell Rose's half in silence. As good as Hugo Cabret was, this is better. Each book deals with finding friends, family, and a place to belong, and the use of art in finding a path through the world. Both books also have that elusive, unquantifiable element: A sense of wonder. Highly recommended.