Life: An Exploded Diagram by Mal Peet Candlewick Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick Scholastic Judged by Chris Lynch
School Library Journal, being the efficient operation that it is, had all four of the books from the previous round in this bracket sent to me before I got started. All four were still in play, and they want the judges to be able to get right out of the blocks when the time comes. My first reaction when all four had arrived was:
My goodness, there’s a lot of talent in the room.
Shortly thereafter, though, I got the word that two of the titles had been eliminated and I didn’t need to feel quite as intimidated and overwhelmed. My new feeling was:
My goodness, there’s a lot of talent in the room.
The two titles I had to judge were Brian Selznick’s WONDERSTRUCK and Mal Peet’s LIFE: AN EXPLODED DIAGRAM.
WONDERSTRUCK was the first one to emerge from the first round, and so we’ll start there. My lovely missus, who is an artist, checked out what I was up to, examining Selznick’s work in particular. We have a running gag in my house about being jealous of creative artists who are gifted with both lavish and varied talents. She spent a bit of time with both the text and the artwork of WONDERSTRUCK.
“So, you gonna hate him?” she says. “Well, I’m gonna try,” I says.
Happy to report that I failed miserably in this attempt. Combining two …
