Common Sense Media Review
By Mary Eisenhart
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Haunting collection of story fragments traces love and loss.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 12+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Read
What's the Story?
Like its namesake, KALEIDOSCOPE contains narrative fragments that rearrange into new patterns with each turn -- leaving it to your imagination to put them together as it seems right to you. In one thread, two schoolboys form a deep connection and one dies, leaving the other bereft. In another, a giant loves a boy, and it ends in tragic metamorphosis. Knights, butterflies, and Egypt weave in and out. And often grief for lost love and happiness drives the creation of wondrous things.
Is It Any Good?
Brian Selznick rearranges story elements to haunting effect in this collection of loosely related, illustrated fragments, left to the reader to weave together into their own story. Like its namesake, Kaleidoscope invites endless return visits and contemplations from new perspectives.Two boys with a near-cosmic connection, dark passages, sphinxes, knights, butterflies and more all turn up frequently in this collection of short tales steeped in overwhelming images of love, beauty, grief, loss, and transformation.
"I wonder if any of it was real. Could I have truly seen a cathedral tremble or a painting of an angel breathe? Could I have been lost inside a labyrinth? Was I really once a bird?
"Whenever the questions keep me up at night, I hear James whisper in my ear. He says, 'Yes,' and 'Yes,' and 'Yes,' and 'Yes.'"
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about how Kaleidoscope presents you with fragments of a story and invite you to put them together for yourself. Have you ever read a story like this and put together a narrative in your head -- only to find that one of your friends read the same thing and spun a different tale entirely? Did it make you see things from another perspective?
How do you think the black-and-white illustrations and the narratives work together to set up their worlds and tell their stories in Kaleidoscope?
Have you read earlier books by Brian Selznick? Do you have any favorites?
Book Details
- Author :
- Illustrator : Brian Selznick
- Genre : Literary Fiction
- Topics : Fantasy ( Magic ) , Adventures , Friendship
- Book type : Fiction
- Publisher : Scholastic
- Publication date : September 21, 2021
- Publisher's recommended age(s) : 10 - 18
- Number of pages : 208
- Available on : Nook, Audiobook (unabridged), Hardback, Apple Books, Kindle
- Last updated : September 29, 2025
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