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WEEKLYPRESS.COM · UCREVIEW.COM · NOVEMBER 30 · 2011 After Te Invention of Hugo Cabret, what? Wonderstruck! continued from page 11


(both Hugo Cabret and Ben are orphaned) and girls are called upon to be fearless when they are afraid, to hold


their fears and sometimes their secrets deep within un- til it is safe to reveal them, to endure, and to love life itself. Asked about the deaf heroes of this tale, Selznick talks


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about seeing a television documentary called Through Deaf Eyes, about the history of deaf culture. He was par- ticularly taken by a descrip- tion of the transition from silent to sound movies in 1927, and its blow to the deaf community. Where the deaf had been able to enjoy silent films while participating in American popular culture, suddenly they were cut off, excluded. This would be a striking moment to Brian Selznick, whose grandfather was first cousin to legendary Holly- wood movie producer David O. Selznick. Later in the television docu- mentary, Selznick says, there was an interview with a young deaf man raised by hearing parents. Only when he went to a college where he met other deaf people did he learn that deafness wasn’t just a condition but a long and rich culture with its unique language and sto- ries. Says Selznick, “I became intrigued by the idea that sometimes we find our heri- tage or the place we belong outside our biological fam- ily.”


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For Ben, who goes to live with his nearby cousins immedi- ately after his beloved moth- er’s death, finding someone to trust is not so easy. He shares his cousin’s room, but


the cousin is resentful. Ben has to go outside his biologi- cal family to discover a true friend, and far from home in Minnesota to New York City and its museums to discover what he needs to know. In the process, Selznick takes his orphan to the American Museum of Natural History in NYC (he details his con- nection to the AMNH in the book’s acknowledgements) and to the Queens Museum in Flushing Meadows, where he encounters the miniatur- ized but fully accurate Pan- orama of the City of New York which was part of the 1964 World’s Fair. Selznick missed the original, but I was there. In 1964. To see it again, rendered here in graphite on a series of pages, was so compelling that I’ve planned a visit to Flushing Meadows this winter to see the pre- served Panorama in person. Selznick, born in New Bruns- wick, New Jersey in 1966, visited the Queens Museum in 2009 to make sketch after sketch, working on, above, and below the Panorama. He sometimes worked under a magnifying glass to render in his characteristic crosshatch the very intricacies of the massive display. Until Janu- ary 2012, the Queens Mu- seum will also be displaying Selznick’s sketches. There are two Philadelphia


connections for Selznick, who divides his time be- tween San Diego and New York City. One is South Phil- adelphia’s Marian Ander- son, a giant of 20th


century


concerts and operatic perfor- mance, who bravely broke color barriers and is the cen- ter of Pam Munoz Ryan’s When Marian Sang, which Selznick illustrated. He came to Philadelphia to research her birthplace and called the highlight of his trip his visit to Marian Anderson’s home, where the Marian Anderson Historical Society is based. He photographed the house, including the wallpaper that Selznick used in his illustra- tions. He went to her church and to the probable music school in South Philadelphia that had rejected her for her color. His other connection is the Franklin Institute, where he spent hours in the base- ment, observing the work- ings of a 19th


century autom-


aton so that he could be his- torically accurate about the automaton at the heart of The Invention of Hugo Cabret. The Franklin Institute automaton came to the museum after it had been damaged in a fire, and no sooner had it been repaired than the automa- ton drew four pictures and wrote three poems, and then, like the one in the story Sel- znick had already made up, it signed its maker’s name. Selznick dedicates Won- derstruck very simply, “To Maurice Sendak.” In an in- terview, Selznick said, “I’ve always loved the wild rum- pus in Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are because the world disappears, the pic- tures take up the whole page, and we move forward in the story by turning the pages.” This publishing industry concept of the “page turn” is embraced by Selznick, first in Hugo Cabret and now inWon- derstruck. In the beginning, Selznick gives the reader hints about meaning as we turn page af- ter page of nothing but pic- tures. First there is a beauti- ful woman on facing pages in a close up. Then the same face appears on the next fac- ing pages as part of a poster or magazine about a star, and racing to turn the page, we see the “camera” focus on the same information only now we know it’s a movie magazine cover, and there’s a postcard where we learn that the magazine picture is part of a gift to someone, but whom? And then there is, in the same space but pull-


ing back to show more of a room, a young girl who has just put down the scissors with which she has cut out the cover of a movie maga- zine, and then here we are in her room with her, with other photos of the beauti- ful woman, facing New York City. And then the girl looks longingly out the window at the skyline of New York City, and then she makes a card that says “Help me,” and she climbs from her second story window onto a tree and onto a path and begins to run. We know because we have turned the page and see her looking backward at the house, holding fast to her “Help me” sign. Turning the next page eagerly, we see her head above a wooden fence and can sense her speed. Nearly 30 pages of pencil drawings, and our hearts, along with the girl, are rac- ing. In his visual art, Selznick somehow makes his 6” x 9” book feel like a huge movie screen with close-ups and angle shots and dissolves. But then the text returns, and we are holding the 6” x 9” book in our hands, this world in miniature. As a child, Selznick loved minia- ture things. “I made entire cities out of twigs in the woods behind my house,” says Selznick, who, hav- ing read about a family of little people living under the floorboards of a child’s room, made an entire set of furniture for the little family, pretending they lived under his own floorboards. He was also entranced by magic and a belief in the power of imag- ination, so that the first book he authored and illustrated was The Houdini Box. Each of the stories in Won- derstruck echoes and informs the other one until there is the third story created by their intersection; Brian Selznick has called the making of this book “a joy, a challenge, and a puzzle to put together.” For those of us on the re- ceiving end of Selznick’s imagination and expansive soul, there is something that is almost Biblical, reaching into our loneliest, most long- ing selves. Wonderstruck of- fers the chance to take the journey, to be uncommonly brave, to grow wise, and to experience, in unexpected places and unexpected ways, a taste of love. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the word “wonderstruck” entered the English language.


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