The Marvels
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3.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $28.99
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- $28.99
Publisher Description
Caldecott Award winner and bookmaking trailblazer Brian Selznick once again plays with the form he invented and takes readers on an awe-inspiring voyage! Two seemingly unrelated stories-one in words, the other in pictures-come together with spellbinding synergy! The illustrated story begins in 1766 with Billy Marvel, the lone survivor of a shipwreck, and charts the adventures of his family of actors over five generations. The prose story opens in 1990 and follows Joseph, who has run away from school to an estranged uncle's puzzling house in London, where he, along with the reader, must piece together many mysteries. How the picture and word stories intersect will leave readers marveling over Selznick's storytelling prowess. Filled with mystery, vibrant characters, surprise twists, and heartrending beauty, and featuring Selznick's most arresting art to date, The Marvels is a moving tribute to the power of story.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Selznick imagines an alternate backstory for a real English tourist attraction, the Dennis Severs' House: 10 meticulously curated rooms that suggest what life might have been like for a family of Huguenot silk weavers in 18th-century London. The first 500 pages are double-page pencil drawings that (almost) wordlessly tell the story of the Marvel family, beginning with a 1766 shipwreck and following successive generations as they gain fame in London's theater community. As he did in his Caldecott Medal winning The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Selznick uses a telescoping point of view with great success, bringing the audience effortlessly from the general to the specific, from wide shot to close-up. The next 200 pages are prose, jumping forward to 1990 when a boy named Joseph Jervis has run away from boarding school in search of an uncle he has never met. Uncle Albert, who lives in a home maintained in much the same way as the Dennis Severs' House, has been reclusive ever since losing his "beloved" to AIDS, but Joseph and the neighbor girl he befriends, Frankie, refuse to stay away. Viewed narrowly, it's a love letter to the Dennis Severs' House, but readers won't need preexisting knowledge of the museum to enjoy this powerful story about creating lasting art and finding family in unexpected places. Ages 8 12.
