Selznick, Brian (1966-…), is an American illustrator and author of children’s books. Selznick won the 2008 Caldecott Medal for his illustrations for The Invention of Hugo Cabret (2007). Selznick also wrote the text for the book. The Caldecott Medal is an annual award for the best picture book by an American.
The Invention of Hugo Cabret consists of more than 500 pages, with 284 pages of black-and-white drawings. The story centers on a 12-year-old orphan named Hugo who lives in the walls of a railroad station in Paris in the early 1900’s. The boy’s recently deceased father had given Hugo a humanlike mechanical figure. The father worked in a museum, where he discovered the figure seated at a desk, holding a pen as if to write a message. Hugo becomes obsessed with getting the mechanical figure to work.
Hugo encounters two other important characters during the story, an eccentric girl and a bitter old man, each protecting personal secrets. The novel also includes a mysterious drawing, a treasured notebook, a stolen key, and a hidden message from Hugo’s dead father. The narrative touches on the early history of motion pictures in the appearance of Georges Méliès, a real-life French pioneer in the development of movies. In 2011, the book became a feature-length motion picture, Hugo, directed by the American filmmaker Martin Scorsese. Selznick’s book The Hugo Movie Companion (2011) provides a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the movie.
Selznick was born in East Brunswick Township, New Jersey, on July 14, 1966. He received a B.F.A. degree from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1988 and worked in a bookstore in New York City from 1988 to 1991. Selznick became a full-time children’s illustrator and author in 1991 with the publication of The Houdini Box, which he wrote and illustrated. He also wrote and illustrated The Robot King (1995); The Boy of a Thousand Faces (2000); Wonderstruck (2011); The Marvels (2015); a collection of interconnected stories called Kaleidoscope (2021); and Big Tree (2023).
Selznick has illustrated many books by other American authors. They include Frindle (1996), written by Andrew Clements; Amelia and Eleanor Go for a Ride (1999) and When Marian Sang (2002), both written by Pam Muñoz Ryan; The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins (2001) and Walt Whitman: Words for America (2004), both written by Barbara Kerley; Marley’s Ghost (2006), written by David Levithan; and The Runaway Dolls (2008), written by Ann M. Martin and Laura Godwin.
