The Marvels

kjtennis - This book was so breathtaking! The illustrations were beautiful, and the story was well-written. I think this author really knows what he is doing; he's created THREE best-selling novels loaded with fascinating drawings and impressive stories. But THIS book is about a boy named Billy Marvel who is rescued and sent to England after a tragic shipwreck. He then discovers the Royal Theater, where he finds he truly belongs. One day, he finds a baby boy on his doorstep, and takes him in as one of his own. This boy adapts to the theater, has a son, and the story continues. The story then skips ahead to 1990. A new boy named Joseph is in search for his uncle after running away from his strict school with his friend, Blink. A mysterious friend, Frankie, helps Joseph find his uncle, but his uncle refuses to take him in. Eventually, he agrees, but not for long. Read to find out what happens next! This book is SO good, so read it!

Starred review from July 6, 2015
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 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. 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 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. 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. 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. Ages 8–12.

Starred review from July 1, 2015
In the final volume of a trilogy connected by theme, structural innovation, and exquisite visual storytelling, Selznick challenges readers to see.Starting in 1766, the first portion unfolds in nearly 400 pages of pictures, rendered in pencil. A ship in shadows, a luminous angel, an abandoned baby in a basket-these are among the phenomena affecting five generations of London actors. Disguises and surprises reveal that what one sees is not always what is true. Fast-forwarding to the 1990s, the author describes in prose a runaway who peers longingly into a candlelit dwelling. Joseph is searching for an uncle and something more elusive-family. Observant readers will recall this recently viewed address. Inspired by the actual Dennis Severs' House (where scent, sound, setting, and the motto "You either see it or you don't" transport visitors to 18th-century London), Selznick provides a sensory equivalent throughout his eloquent and provocative text. The poetry of Yeats and references to The Winter's Tale add luster. Carefully crafted chapters pose puzzles and connect to the prior visual narrative. In poignant scenes, the teen learns about his uncle's beloved, lost to AIDS but present through the truths of the home's staged stories. A powerful visual epilogue weaves threads from both sections, and the final spread presents a heartening awakening to sight.Time, grief, forgiveness, and love intersect in epic theater celebrating mysteries of the heart and spirit. (notes) (Fiction. 10 & up)

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Starred review from August 1, 2015

Gr 4-6-This brilliant journey through time in words and pictures is also a story of a theatrical family and their fortunes. This heavy tome opens to tell of one family, the Marvels, from 1766 to 1900 as their connection to the Royal Theatre in London begins and perhaps ends. In the first half of the book, all of this complex history is vividly conveyed through illustrations, with minor hints from playbills, cards, and letters that appear as part of the art. Selznick's ability to convey the passing of time and connections among characters is remarkable. Characters appear, shine, and disappear throughout the years, but certain motifs recur no matter where the spotlight is focused. The second portion of the story is conveyed entirely in text, building on the same themes but taking place in 1990 in a very different London, where the echoes from the past are particularly embodied in 13-year-old Joseph, a boarding school runaway searching for his uncle's house. He soon meets Uncle Albert, who seems less interested in getting to know his nephew than in the preservation of an anachronistic Victorian house which is more museum than home. The echoes from the earlier history are haunting, requiring Joseph to delve into the secrets of Uncle Albert and of the house without giving away his own. Selznick ends with a satisfying section of illustrations that embody the maxim of this family, "You either see it or you don't." VERDICT Complex, entertaining, and full of gorgeous art and writing, this is a powerhouse of a book.-Carol A. Edwards, Denver Public Library, CO

Copyright 2015 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from July 1, 2015
Grades 5-8 *Starred Review* Caldecott Medalist Selznick has been creating acclaimed illustrated novels for years now, and his latest takes his groundbreaking narrative format to new heights. Whereas The Invention of Hugo Cabret (2007) and Wonderstruck (2011) wove together alternating illustrations and prose, The Marvels opens with a nearly 400-page wordless illustrated story before moving on to words. With his signature close-up, crosshatched pencil drawings and cinematic visual pacing, Selznick opens on a ship at sea, the Kraken, with a young girl tied to the mast and threatened by a vicious monster. Just in the nick of time, an angel appears, ready to save her, but a page turn later, Selznick reveals that the whole scene is a play performed on the ship. Real disaster strikes, however, when a sudden storm tosses the ship, and it sinks into the waves. The girl and the angelreally two brothers, Billy and Marcusare the sole survivors, along with Billy's dog, Tar, but Marcus dies on the desert island they've washed up on. Thankfully, Billy is rescued, and after arriving in London, he finds a home among the backstage rigging crew at the Royal Theater. From there, Selznick traces generations of the Marvel family, who all work in the theater in one capacity or another. The final Marvel, Leontes, is a terrible actor and a huge disappointment to his father, so he decides to run away to sea, but just as he's about to depart, he finds the theater engulfed in flames. It's there that the Marvel family saga abruptly ends, and after a few starkly blank pages, the story switches to prose and skips ahead to London in 1990, where Selznick introduces Joseph Jervis, a 13-year-old on the run from his boarding school in England and searching for his estranged uncle, Albert Nightingale. Once he finally finds his uncle's house, he discovers something truly strange: Albert lives in a veritable time capsule. Nineteenth-century furnishings, candlelit chandeliers, ornate paintings of ships, and lush upholstery fill each room. Even stranger, Albert keeps each room in careful disarray, as if a group of people has just left, cleaning and dusting but swapping day-old, half-eaten food and cups of tea with fresh replacements. Curious Joseph can't help but explore, much to the frustration of his grumpy, reserved uncle, and he starts to notice odd things. Pictures of a ship called the Kraken appear all over the house. A picture of a young boy named Leonteswith red hair, just like his ownis laid out reverentially on a sideboard. Joseph asks his uncle many questions, but Albert's cagey reluctance to answer only solidifies the boy's belief that there's a magnificent (or dreadful) family secret at play. Thanks to the threads of the illustrated tale that are woven throughout the prose story, readers will almost certainly be as convinced as Joseph that there's hidden family history to be discovered. But the reality is both more prosaic and more magical. Just as Selznick's detailed and artfully deliberate illustrations gradually build a moving narrative, so, too, do his carefully wrought words. In unembellished and evocative prose, he slowly shares clues and masterfully misdirects readers' attentions. After Albert reveals the truth, certain slightly odd details from the illustrations, particularly the leitmotifs that link each generation of the Marvels, suddenly take on new significance, and the facts Joseph thinks he has figured out crisply shift into something far more resonant than just a swashbuckling family history. Joseph, who is gently evaluating his sexuality and feeling very different, hopes to find some answers about himself in the secrets Albert is keeping....