In replicating the storytelling format of Hugo, Selznick begs comparisons that could easily find Wonderstruck wanting or just seem stale. If Hugo Cabret was a risky experiment that succeeded beyond Selznick and publisher Scholastic’s wildest dreams (well, maybe not Scholastic’s-they dream big), his follow-up, Wonderstruck, is a far riskier enterprise. In a world where the new becomes old in the blink of an eye, Selznick could have honorably rested on his laurels and returned to the standard 32-to-48–page picture-book format he has already mastered. Weighing in at about two pounds, the 500-plus page tome combined textual and visual storytelling in a way no one had quite seen before. He didn't have to return to the groundbreaking pictures-and-text format that stunned the children's-book world in 2007 and won him an unlikely-though entirely deserved-Caldecott medal for The Invention of Hugo Cabret.
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