The two stories come together at the climax of the book, which manages to incorporate an impressive array of heartfelt issues: everything from education for the deaf to friendship, love of collecting, conservation, memories and dioramas. Interwoven with Ben's story is the visual narrative of the girl who, like Ben, runs away to New York. This sets Ben off on a journey of discovery. The book has been dedicated 'to Danny from M', and has a bookmark from a New York bookstore in its pages.

Going through his mother's effects, he discovers a book entitled Wonderstruck, a history of museums from the early cabinets of delights to the great institutions of the present day. Ben is living with his uncle's family after the death of his mother in a car accident. The story of Ben, a young boy in 1970s Minnesota who runs away to New York in search of his father, is told in prose, while an accompanying narrative of a deaf girl in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1923, is conveyed entirely visually. By comparison with the flowing visual sequences, the writing feels a little flat. It is ideal for the novel's frequent twists and turns and the numerous lyrical high points which culminate in the cinematic close ups of which Selznick is so fond. Selznick's style as an illustrator is a cross between LS Lowry and Maurice Sendak, a mixture of the touchingly naive and the closely observed, rendered in luminous pencil shading. This technique is at the heart of the book, and, take it from me, this book has heart. It is a visual tour de force, part stop frame animation, part picture book. Wolves bound towards the reader out of dark snowy wastes, culminating in an extreme close up of a wolf's eye. The opening sequence of pages is stunning. I gulped back my rising envy and began to read. Several Minnesotan forests have been sacrificed to furnish an initial print run of half a million copies. No expense has been spared, and not just in the design. The printing and design are gorgeous, the paper of the highest quality, and the heft of the book, a Selznick trademark, would shame a Russian novel.

Everything about this book begs you to love it. So it was with a cynical and steely eye that would have done my daughter proud, that I opened my review copy of Wonderstruck and prepared myself to be anything but.

The Robot King by Brian Selznick