Kate Forsyth's Reviews > The Marvels

Brian Selznick is an artist as well as an author, and his books combine words and pictures in the most wonderful of ways. The story in the first half of The Marvels is told entirely through exquisite pencil drawings. Storms at sea, shipwrecks, angels, babies abandoned at theatres, old lunatics in the basement, a devastating fire … all is revealed through one delicate complex drawing after another. The second half of the story is told in words, and turns everything the reader thought they knew upside down and inside out. I can’t express just how brilliant this book is … but I will tell you I turned the last page with a lump in my throat and tears on my face. This book is not just for children … it is a tour de force, a work of genius, and a collector’s item. Buy his other books at the same time - The Invention of Hugo Cabret and Wonderstruck – for extraordinary works of art unlike anything else in the world.