Wonderstruck The Most Amazing Book By Lian Selznick

Wonderstruck

Luke Barton

Period 6

Hitchens

04/14/16

Wonderstruck, an extremely amazing book written and illustrated by Brian Selznick, An award winning author. He has written books such as Hugo Cabaret which won him the Caldecott medal. Wonderstruck is an equally good book if not better with two main characters Ben, and Rose. He does an amazing thing with this book by making two different stories at different times with 50 years apart but they both come together into one almost seamlessly woven story.

The story begins with a boy named Ben, his story begins at Gunflint Lake, Minnesota, June 1977. Ben was born deaf in one of his ears, And when he was a child His mom, died in a car crash, which results him living with his Aunt and Uncle as well

But by looking at the pictures you can tell what’s going on, the emotion that rose went through. Hoboken, New Jersey, 1927. The first picture is of Rose, looking at an article of “Lillian Mayhew”, Rose, being deaf, unhappy and lonely, decided to run away to New York to see her idol. Showing up at the theater, she stumbled upon Mayhew herself. Who we learn is Rose’s mother at the ending. Mayhew grows furious as she sees her daughter before her, and threatens to return her to her dad. That resulted to Rose running away once again. Rose finds herself at the American Museum of Natural History, and is met with her brother Walter. He takes her back to his apartment, and promises Rose that he will talk to their parents. 50 years later, Rose is met with Ben at the bookstore. They conclude to talking to each other, Both of them finding out they are related, and Ben finding out who his dad was.

Wonderstruck is known as a Historical Fiction book. With two characters, both being deaf. They speak using sign language. Ben, learning to sign by “Finger spelling” as it is not technically not known as proper sign language. Sign language or ASL is one of the most wildly used sign languages in the world. There is known to be 200-300,000 signers of ASL in the United States and Canada and many more who has learned it as a second