Stormy Uncle Albert and his strange but beautiful house, with its ships and theater programs, haunting portraits and ghostly presences, lure Joseph on a search for clues about the house, and his own life.Īs readers piece together the mystery of how the two narratives connect, they will be swept up in a gripping adventure that is also a moving exploration of our need to belong and to tell stories. There his family flourishes for generations as brilliant actors until young Leontes Marvel abandons the stage and runs away.Ī century later, Joseph Jervis, another runaway, seeks refuge with an uncle in London.

By Catherine Ramsdell / 9 December 2015 Even before opening the cover of Brian. He survives a devastating shipwreck and later finds work in a London theatre. But Brian Selznick’s The Marvels takes them on and, like the best children’s literature, doesn’t shy away from complex answers. The Marvels is a book about stories and the importance of storiestelling them, living them, keeping them alive. The journey begins on a ship at sea, with a boy named Billy Marvel. In this masterful reimagining of the form he originated, two stand-alone stories-the first in pictures, the second in prose-together create a beguiling narrative puzzle. (Sept.From the Caldecott Award-winning creator of The Invention of Hugo Cabret and Wonderstruck comes a breathtaking voyage of the mind and heart. 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. 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.

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. The Marvels Hardcover 15 September 2015 by Brian Selznick (Author) 434 ratings See all formats and editions Hardcover AED 60.72 12 New from AED 59.72 10 extra discount with Citibank. A breathtaking new voyage from Caldecott Medalist Brian Selznick. 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 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. 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 Marvels by Brian Selznick