Run Away With Me
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
From #1 New York Times bestselling author/illustrator Brian Selznick, a profoundly romantic YA novel about two boys finding each other and falling in love over one summer in Rome.
"I'm going to call you Danny. What are you going to name me?"
"Angelo."
Danny is spending his sixteenth summer in Rome. As his mother spends the day at work in a mysterious museum, he wanders the ancient sites and streets. Soon after his arrival, he encounters a shadow... who becomes a voice... who becomes a boy his age. Angelo.
Soon Danny and Angelo are spending as much time as they can together, piecing together stories of the city while only gradually letting their own histories be shared. Attraction leads to affection, and affection leads to both an intimate closeness and a profound fear of what happens next. Danny has never really had a home, or known the love of another boy. Angelo seems to have more experience... but he also has secrets just out of Danny’s reach.
Run Away With Me is a stunning creation, weaving words and illustration to tell the story of a transformative love over the course of one Roman summer.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Two boys meet, name one other, and fall in love in an extraordinary illustrated novel set in 1986 Rome—a dreamy YA debut from Selznick (Big Tree). An initially unnamed white-cued American 16-year-old who's staying in the city with his book conservator mother feels watched by the locale. Finding a hand-drawn map tucked into a broken statue leads the protagonist to encounter an Italian boy, "almost three thousand years old," who calls him Danny—and whom Danny calls Angelo. The two quickly become inseparable, secretly spending days together as Danny's remaining time in Rome counts down. The boys share cold fruit and tender moments while taking in various sites, and Angelo slowly recounts stories that add to the work's layers, among them the tale of Giovanni Argento, a sailor, and Dante Ferrata, an assistant to sculptor and architect Bernini. Brimming with electric-feeling affection and longing as well as musings on "stories, ...secrets, ...histories," it's an intricately woven Roman holiday: Danny marvels at "my life reflected back through the prism of Angelo," and readers will too. Bookending the work are elegant, closely hatched pencil illustrations that make ample use of chiaroscuro. Ages 12–up.
