Kaleidoscope

This reminded me of Dandelion Wine. Vignettes within a common frame, each with its measure of wonder and strangeness, filled with boyhood exuberance but also loss and a ripening awareness that time both passes (irrevocably) and pauses (poignantly), sometimes within the same moment.

Selznick was absolutely right to title this Kaleidoscope. Fragments of imagery recur in these stories, and while I found my own meaning in them, I'm not sure another reader would share it. I bring my own experiences of grief and loneliness and my own treasured ideas—among them the vicissitudes of knowledge, the power of wonder, the mutability and tentativeness of reality—to the book, and those lenses shape not just what I see, but how I piece it show more together.

And maybe this is just more of the same—more of me seeing what I want to see—but while Kaleidoscope might allow its readers to find their own personal truths, I think the kaleidoscope structure, itself, holds a truth about how we respond to loss or trauma. The fragments, the shifting shapes they make, the ways moments form and reform, never reverting to what they were, but telling and retelling stories about where they came from, each story true but incomplete, each story a necessary piece in a mosaic that reconstructs an approximation of what was, even as it shapes and reshapes what is and what will be. show less

Short stories of different times and places, but always related to the friendship between the narrator and James, as well as James' death, interspersed with detailed pencil drawings like looking through a kaleidoscope.

This is at once a short book and a complicated one. It took me a long time to realize what was happening, that every new story was like the turn of a kaleidoscope and while they had recurring images, they were each a little different and weren't meant to make sense together. In that sense, they're not interconnected, yet each vignette doesn't really make sense on its own, either. Clever, but I'm not sure I enjoyed myself reading it.

"Kaleidoscope" may be the best way to describe this book, a series of fractured stories linked in some way. Characters and themes recur: a boy called James, butterfly life cycles and migration, giants, secret notebooks, dreams and stories. The book is divided into parts and the parts are divided into titled sections, with illustrations between each: a kaleidoscopic close-up, and a zoomed-out illustration of something recognizable to do with the story. Puzzling; a book that has an aura rather than a plot.

An author's note at the end describes the process: that the book had been in the works for years in another form, that in the first months of the pandemic Selznick began making abstract art, and the two came together.

See also: The show more Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg

Quotes

Epigraphs:
To fall in love is to make an appointment with heartbreak. -Matthew Lopez, The Inheritance
Everything changes, nothing ends. -Ovid, Metamorphosis

"What's the point of knowing everything if you forget it and can't even figure out where the answers are?" (29)

I felt like I was face-to-face with time itself. (The Sphinx, 133) show less

Gr 6 Up—Every spin of the kaleidoscope fragments one story while bringing another into focus with vignette-like
explorations of connection and loss. This illustrated collection combines abstract art and short stories as a variety of
characters meditate on grief and love.

When I book talk Kaleidoscope (for high school students) I will say; Let go of your need for a linear story line, immerse yourself in these vignettes, and be open to whatever comes up. I know there will be students for whom this book will resonate deeply and who need this book right now. Others will be like “what just happened” and that’s ok too as they may find themselves wondering about it long after.

- Age: Middle School

- About a boy dealing with the loss of his friend. He goes through memories and dreams with him.

- I might have it in my classroom as it would be good for short stories since each chapter was different enough to be seperate. It was really confusing to read trying to put everything in my mental timeline.

Short stories with same returning characters. Overall it was very disjointed and unreadable.

I cannot recommend this one.

NO STARS