Wonder Struck

Selznick, B. (2011). Wonder Struck. New York, NY: Scholastic Press.

This novel is two separate stories that end up related. Ben Wilson is an orphan and lives with his aunt and uncle steps away from the house he used to share with his mother. He is deaf in one ear. He is searching around in his old house one day and finds the book Wonder Struck and a bookmark with a note. He assumes the note is from his father. While he is calling the bookstore that the bookmark is from, he is struck by lightning and become totally deaf. He is taken to a hospital but escapes to go find his father in New York.

The second story takes place fifty years earlier. Rose is deaf as well and is obsessed with actress who we later realize is her mother. She runs away to New York to be with her but is rejected. Feeling alone Rose runs to the American Museum of Natural History. Eventually she finds her brother Walter. He works there. He had written her a note on a postcard from there and that is how she finds him.

The museum is also where Ben runs to fifty years later. He meets a new friend Jamie but is still determined to find more information on his father. He goes to the the bookstore that was on the bookmark. Turns out Rose's brother Walter works there. Rose comes in and their stories collide. Ben and the reader discover that Rose is his grandmother and that his father has passed. The new found family members have found a place where they belong with each other. Ben has found a piece of his father. Rose has found a piece of her son.

Ben's story is told in text. Rose's is told in pictures. Brian Selznick has done this before.  I never read his other book The Invention of Hugo Cabret, but I did make my daughter, who hates reading, read it. She found the format enjoyable. I do too after reading this book. I think it would be appropriate for more advanced elementary readers. The story of wanting to belong somewhere and feeling alone is a common one in children around 10 years old.