The Amazing Brian Selznick: A Profile in Three Acts

Close your eyes and imagine said curtains draped elegantly across a grand stage. Now picture the curtains parting to reveal an elaborately designed set. Dramatic music rises. Our star steps into the spotlight. He is tall, lean, bespectacled, and, most notably, poised. In his finely tailored suit, he is classically handsome, with dark, wavy hair; dancing brown eyes; and a beguiling, ready laugh. Even from your seat in the audience, you can feel his warmth, his coltish energy, his passion and charisma. And suddenly you know you would travel anywhere with him — London, Paris, Washington, D.C., the moon!

Now you have a sense of how it feels to work with Brian.

ACT I: Artist

Each time art director David Saylor and I begin a new book with Brian, it is like setting out on a bold adventure. There is a tremendous spirit of collaboration, dedication, trust, respect, and fun. Those qualities have accompanied all eight books we have worked on together.

When Brian and I first met in 1995, I was a fledgling associate editor apprenticing with the legendary Jean Feiwel, and he was a fledgling artist who had recently left his job at Eeyore’s Books for Children in Manhattan to work full-time as a freelance illustrator. Jean and I were looking for the right illustrator for Pam Conrad’s Our House: The Stories of Levittown. As a huge fan of The Houdini Box, I suggested Brian, and was thrilled when Jean agreed.

Browsing through the Our House file recently, I was appalled to discover that I had written a detailed illustration list for Brian, suggesting exactly what he should draw. (Clearly, I had a lot to learn.) Luckily for me, Brian didn’t balk or back out. In fact, he dove in with fervor. He made a trip to Levittown, toured the town and surrounding areas with Pam, met with the local librarian, dug around in the library’s archives, took tons of photos, read tons of books, and followed his immense curiosity wherever it led him. He then created fourteen beautiful little pen-and-ink drawings, each one filled with detail and feeling. Tireless and meticulous, he poured his whole heart into the project, giving it as much attention, respect, and care as if it were his own.

From the very beginning, Brian has shown a kind of reverence for creativity. And his studio is a sanctuary for it. Books, toys, handmade sculptures that serve as models for his characters, paintings, props, and miscellaneous collections surround his work in progress, laid out on his drafting table and pinned to the walls. In someone else’s space it might look cluttered, but in Brian’s it is harmoniously arranged and inviting, as though you have stepped into a mini-museum of the artist’s mind.

Every time I visit, I am amazed to see how Brian weaves his vast and wide-ranging interests (from Houdini to robots to movies) into his work in a way that is both fascinating and accessible. Everything flows together seamlessly. The seeds of an idea he used in one book might flower in another. It is all part of a beautiful
continuum.

When a new book is in progress, Brian frequently comes in to Scholastic to talk to us about his broad vision as well as details he might have uncovered in his research and is eager to include. Nearly always, he brings pint-sized sketch dummies. Rather than having us review thumbnail sketches on a single flat page, he wants us to hold these three-dimensional mini-books, turn the pages, and feel the story’s visual flow and dramatic build. The dummies are always enormously helpful. They allow us to see exactly how the book will unfold — no surprises at a stage too late to fix. They also give us the time to be creative with other aspects of the bookmaking, from the jacket design to the endpapers.

Then there are the times we don’t hear from Brian for weeks. After one of his vanishing acts, invariably, he shows up in our offices — looking a little tired, a little thinner, but somehow still radiating that quintessential Brian energy — and delivers all of his final artwork early.

Brian’s attentiveness to the page turn and his love of the book as an object began early on and has culminated in The Invention of Hugo Cabret, for which he created numerous half-pint-sized dummies, detailing all of the 284 drawings that would ultimately appear in the book. His vision for how the pictures would unfold and advance the plot was so strong that, while the text underwent several rounds of revision, only a handful of the illustrations that appeared in those early sketch dummies were changed or dropped.

Brian has lots more ideas for how to experiment with the page turn and the book as an object, and this is one of the things I find most exciting about working with him: he continues to challenge himself, push the boundaries of what’s been done before, and surprise us with his inventions. My job is to trust his vision, encourage him to follow his instincts, ask questions, and occasionally nudge him in one direction or another. I don’t tell him what to draw anymore.

After Hugo Cabret came out, people asked me if it was scary to publish such a risk-taking book. To me, it never felt risky. Innovative, groundbreaking, and different, to be sure, but there was nothing uncertain about it. It was a big leap in Brian’s evolution as an artist — but still part of that beautiful continuum.

ACT II: Showman

Some of you know that Brian is also a puppeteer. He has worked with the world-renowned puppet master Basil Twist and has created three productions of his own. Performing Twist’s “Symphonie Fantastique,” Brian made me feel joy and sadness simply by manipulating strips of colored cloth. In his own “The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins” (adapted from his and Barbara Kerley’s book of the same title), a little dinosaur bone inspired awe as it “narrated” the story, floating around an antique desk (piled with dirt to resemble an archaeological dig) and over boxes, books, and cabinets — which opened to reveal miniature dioramas! Brian’s imagination, much like a film or theater director’s, works as well in three dimensions as in two.

Like all good showmen, Brian is spontaneous. He can speak thoughtfully and articulately without notes. He is quick-witted. He can find humor in just about anything, including himself.
And he has a big imagination. This quality revealed itself to me early on when Brian invented
a parade.

Three months after Our House was published, Pam Conrad died from an illness she’d been bravely fighting for years. Even though we had known her only a short time, Brian and I were deeply affected by her death and wanted to find a way to honor her life. So, in the fall of 1996, when the Levittown children’s librarian, Mary Ann Donato, called Brian to let him know about a parade the town was hosting to commemorate its fiftieth anniversary, we were excited. Of course we would come, Brian told her. We would march in Pam’s honor.

We’ll have to dress up, Brian told me. Everyone will be in costume. Really? I asked. Oh, yes, he assured me. We would dress as the first citizens of Levittown, from the 1940s. And I was not to worry — Brian had a friend who was a costume designer for the theater, and she would lend us what we needed. He came to my apartment a few weeks later with bags of clothing and accessories. Like a child eagerly anticipating his first school play, he couldn’t wait for the big day. He’d even made a beautiful sign with the book jacket on one side and the words “In memory of Pam Conrad, who loved Levittown” on the other.

As it turned out, we were the only ones in costume. Brian just chuckled, and for several hours we proudly carried our sign alongside cheerleaders, police officers, and marching band
members. From the sidewalk, kids called out, “Look, it’s grandma and grandpa!”

I’ve been carried along by Brian’s imagination ever since.

ACT III: Friend

Not only are Brian’s artistic talents limitless and his showmanship heartfelt, but his spirit is large and generous. Even after completing a project, he doesn’t feel finished until he personally thanks all the people who helped him along the way.

In 2006, after we sent Hugo Cabret off to the printer, Brian made the whole team handcrafted antique clockworks, each one mounted on a little red velvet bed and tucked inside a glass case. I know that Brian had very little time to come up for air between finishing the book and embarking on a demanding book tour, and this is how he chose to spend it — saying thank you.

Though Brian gives many handmade gifts, he does not sell his artwork, or even part with it. Most of it is tucked safely in flat files in his studio. A few pieces hang on the walls of his mother’s house. So it was especially touching when he gave me the jacket painting for The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins, elegantly framed, for a wedding present. Every time I look at it, I feel Brian’s love and friendship.

Brian’s travels to promote The Invention of Hugo Cabret have taken him all over
the United States and, several times, to Europe. I asked him how he was managing the busyness, and he confessed that he was having a little trouble keeping up with his e-mails. I suggested he hire someone to help him respond to the less personal ones. He paused and then said that he would have some difficulty weeding them out. If he were contacted by someone at a school he’d spoken at five years ago, for example, he couldn’t imagine letting someone else answer on his behalf. For him, this was still a personal relationship.

When I look back at the extraordinary books Brian has created over his seventeen-year career and recall the many adventures we have had together, I am inspired by his work as an artist, delighted by his showmanship, and, most of all, honored to call him my friend.

Tracy Mack is executive editor at Scholastic Press.