The Marvels by Brian Selznick : Book Review

Title  :  The Marvels

Author  :  Brian Selznick

Publisher  :  Scholastic Press

Original Publication Date  :  15 September 2015

Length  :  640 pages 

Rating  : ★ ★

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Synopsis  :  Caldecott Award winner and bookmaking trailblazer Brian Selznick once again plays with the form he invented and takes readers on an awe-inspiring voyage!

Filled with mystery, vibrant characters, surprise twists, and heartrending beauty, and featuring Selznick's most arresting art to date, The Marvels is a moving tribute to the power of story.

Two seemingly unrelated stories-one in words, the other in pictures-come together with spellbinding synergy! The illustrated story begins in 1766 with Billy Marvel, the lone survivor of a shipwreck, and charts the adventures of his family of actors over five generations. The prose story opens in 1990 and follows Joseph, who has run away from school to an estranged uncle's puzzling house in London, where he, along with the reader, must piece together many mysteries. How the picture and word stories intersect will leave readers marveling over Selznick's storytelling prowess.

I know so many people loved this book and I wont lie it's definitely a well written book I cannot take that away from it. Also the illustrations inside are absolutely gorgeous and just amazed me so much. However unfortunately I didn't particularly like this book all that much. 

This book is split up as half installations and then half text. The first half of course was pretty easy to get through and didn't take me long at all as it was simply looking through pictures. However there were a few pages with writing on but not many. When I then got to the text which was almost 400 pages in I didn't feel like I wanted to read the story all that much. I read a few chapters and was kind of like mer okay this is okay but nothing great.

However, as I got probably just over halfway through the text I did start to like it a little more. Again it wasn't anything great or anything that completely blew me away but I still quite enjoyed it enough to give it the extra star as my original thoughts were to give it a 1 star. 

If you want a childrens read to take your mind away from other more complex novels then maybe give this one a go. It may seem like a huge book but I read it within two days. Unfortunately it did nothing for me and the story didn't really give me any great 'feels'.