A book that I feel kind of conflicted about: Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick

**To view spoilers, drag your mouse over the empty space between"<SPOILER>...<SPOILER>"

Um . . .
This book was written by the same guy who wrote The Invention of Hugo Cabret. I really enjoyed that book, so I've been wanting to pick up this book for quite some time now.
I finished this book in less than a few hours because most of it is just pictures. Basically, it's about a boy named Ben who is partially deaf. His mom has died recently, and now he's starting to wonder who his father is. He finds a lot of these clues and eventually pieces the story together.

Let's talk about the positives:

• The book was split into two stories that eventually melted together. One story was told in one words, and one story was told entirely in illustrations.
• The illustrations were brilliant.¹ <I'm going to count this part as a spoiler because it's something that I want anyone who reads it to figure out on their own> The author dropped a lot of clues in the illustrations which were sometimes difficult to pick up on. (For example, if you didn't pick up on the fact that the stories are from different times, there were other subtle hints. There was a newspaper article about Charles Lindbergh in one of the illustrations, and in the text it said that one of the news stories was about kidnapping. I'm not sure if that's just a coincidence, but if it's not, I think that's a cool detail. <SPOILER>
• Brian Selznick has the ability to write. Sure, he's no JK Rowling, but he can tell an interesting story in pictures and words, which I really appreciate.
• It was a fun reading experience. It required a lot of concentration to read this book. I found myself flipping back through the pages when a connected a clue from the text and the pictures and I wanted to make sure.
• I'm kind of rewording my second point, but the illustrations were phenomenal. There were some illustrations where I literally whispered the word "Woahhhh" to myself as I was reading it.

Now for the negatives:

• The writing was very descriptive. I think this is partially due to the fact that the author is also the illustrator. I just feel like more of the book had sentences like "The bookshelf sagged from the weight of the dusty gray textbooks" whereas most books I'm used to reading have sentences like "The dusty gray textbooks reminded Bob of the time he did something that gets the reader emotionally attached to him."
• The ending. <I suppose it's a spoiler> It was just like "Ben reunited with his grandmother and hugged her. They looked at the moon. The end." I was left with lots of questions. What happens next? Does Ben live with his grandmother? Does Ben get a job at the museum? Does Ben ever return to Gunflint Lake? What profession does Jamie take up? <SPOILER>
• The author did too good of a job with illustrating. It made me dread the text. To be honest, the writing was kind of bland. There were some interesting metaphors and adjectives, but a lot of them were cliché. (Ex: twinkling stares, glow of the moon, swaying grass) So, I would trudge through a few pages of text and then be rewarded with some awesome pages filled with pictures.
• There wasn't a plot for the first 400 pages. It was just like "Ben's deaf. Now for some pictures of a girl running and looking scared."
• The information dump. <SPOILER> You know how in the beginning of books, there's usually a lot of "information dumps?" (Ex: Kathryn liked volleyball, soccer, cats, chairs, the color pink, sunsets, strawberries, pina coladas, getting caught in the rain, etcetera) Well, there was an information dump at the end of the book. (A reiteration: "I'm your grandmother. I gave birth to your father. Your father was not deaf. I am deaf. Your grandfather was deaf. Your grandfather died. Now let me tell you about my life story . . .) I didn't think that was a clever enough way of adding in the information. <SPOILER>
• This one's going to be a bit of a rant. But I feel like having deaf characters was too convenient. It made it far too easy for the author to tell the story better. I suppose that's a good thing, but the guy who wrote this book is an illustrator. I think it was just a little too easy for him to have the characters write down what they were thinking. There's nothing wrong with having deaf characters, but I was just thinking the whole time "It's really convenient that their conversations are being written down on paper, isn't it?"
• The plot was interesting, but I feel like the author could have done more with it. <SPOILER> The girl's mom was a famous movie star . . . . . . . . . . . and???? I was just waiting for something cool to happen with that. I was waiting for someone to say "Hey! It's that famous movie star's daughter!" and I was waiting to hear her mother say something like "My daughter is deaf. I was embarrassed, so we told no one outside of the family" and I was waiting for a huge media scandal involving her, but I feel like the girl's parents were barely even a part of the book. <SPOILER>

Somehow, the positives outweigh the negatives. What I really like is that most of the clues in the illustrations were very clever, and they added a whole other layer to the story. I enjoyed the book, and I recommend it.

^{1  One of the lovely illustrations.}