Shelf Awareness--Kaleidoscope

MG/YA Review: Kaleidoscope

Kaleidoscope by Brian Selznick (Scholastic, 208p., ages 10-up, 9781338777246, September 21, 2021)

Kaleidoscope, a transcendent offering by the Caldecott Medal-winning Brian Selznick (The Invention of Hugo Cabret; Wonderstruck; The Marvels), is infused with different kinds of seemingly ordinary magics: time and space, friendship and love, science and fairy tale. Selznick's eighth work as an author and illustrator is formatted as a collection of 24 interconnected, nonlinear stories in which the whole vision is far greater than the sum of each of its gorgeous parts.

In the opening story, the first-person narrator turns 13 years old and makes off with a ship. They and their friend James sail "past the pillars of Hercules into the West Ocean." A fierce storm carries the pair to the moon, where they're enlisted to help the king in his battle against the sun. After "fighting among the stars for centuries," the narrator returns to Earth alone (James remains behind as the new King of the Moon), to find that only a few days have passed on Earth and they are being blamed for James's death. In the second story, the narrator is a giant who forms a friendship with the human boy James, a person "no bigger than the end of my finger." Though they don't speak the same language, the pair bond over books. And in the third, the narrator is a winged creature exiled to an island 300 years ago. When the narrator rescues a shipwrecked boy, they give the boy access to their personal library, where the boy finds that "everything that happens can be found" in one of the books. The boy learns that the island is really a "heartbroken giant" who "died at the edge of the sea... and for a hundred years the wind blew salt, and sand, and soil, and seeds across his giant body until it became a mountain."

As Selznick himself says in his author's note, "certain themes and images... reappear... gardens and butterflies, apples, angels, fires, trees, friendships, islands, keys, shipwrecks, grief, and love." With them, the author has created a magical place where everything changes except, of course, those few things which stay constant. The relationship between the narrator and James is at the heart of all, and the deeply connected pair love--and are in love--in various ways throughout. Selznick's signature meticulous and heavily cross-hatched pencil illustrations, both abstract and realistic, grace the beginning and end of each brief story. This lovely, ethereal work hopefully makes a case for what the King of the Moon wisely proclaims: "without dreams, everything dies." --Lynn Becker, reviewer, blogger, and children's book author.

Shelf Talker: Caldecott-winner Selznick offers a spellbinding, nonlinear portrait of intense friendship and love that transcends time and space.