Author Brian Selznick celebrated the launch of his illustrated novel, Wonderstruck, inside New York City’s American Museum of Natural History this week. The video embedded above offers a sneak peek at the book.
Selznick greeted guests underneath the iconic blue whale, pointing out that Wonderstruck shares the same name as Taylor Swift‘s new perfume.
Selznick revealed that several museum exhibits inspired his book, including the Gunflint Lake wolf diorama, the famous dinosaur hall and the thirty-four ton Ahnighito meteorite.
The protagonist (Ben Wilson) was named after James Perry Wilson, the artist who created the background of the wolf diorama. Other sources of inspiration included the 2007 documentary Through Deaf Eyes, E. L. Konigsburg‘s Newbery-winning novel From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and the Queens Museum of Art.
Selznick took three years and drew hundreds of drawings to complete this project.