Kaleidoscope by Brian Selznick is a upper elementary+ fiction book written by Selznick during and post-pandemic.
In this story, two people find each other in memory, time, space and more. Their story is abstract and revolves around questions of love and death, what it means to be gone and the impact one has on another.
^ Yup, that's the best summary I can come up with.
Kaleidoscope is an abstract rollercoaster of stories, twining together in ways difficult or even impossible to see. Every time I thought I saw a sequence of connections, I'd get confused again until I finally just embraced that this story is about the narrator and James and that the narrator and James in each of the stories are not necessarily the same people, beings, or things.
I prefer to take this book as a set of short stories because each story, individually, is beautifully done and impactful too. If I could keep my mind from trying to decipher the story as a whole, I'd have given the book five stars. That being said, our catalogers have this book in our juvenile fiction section and I honestly don't know any kids under 6th grade or even 8th who would really "get" it. Hell, I don't. I'd actually love to get the opinion of a few 10-18 year olds to get their opinion about the book.
Kaleidoscope was just as it's title intends, fractured and yet beautiful in it's chaos.
That's all for now!
-M-
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