The Marvels

Publishers Weekly ¡ï 07/06/2015 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¨Cwinning 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¨C12. (Sept.)