Wonderstruck

“Hoboken, New Jersey, October 1927” 

Illustrations reveal the story of Rose, an adolescent girl, whose name we learn from a postcard on her desk. She is cutting out images of a celebrity, Lillian Mayhew, and pasting them around her room. Out the window of the manor where she lives, she sees a teacher approach in a black car. New York City is visible across the water. Rose begins writing a note that says, “Help.” There is a close-up of the teacher’s fist preparing to knock on the door.

The narrative returns to Ben, who is watching a storm roll in from the window of his bedroom. He recalls watching the northern lights with his mother and the smell of her cigarettes in the cold night. Suddenly, he sees a light come on in his mother’s old bedroom window. Ben steadies himself, grabs a flashlight, and goes to investigate.

Returning to illustration, Rose shimmies down the tree outside her window, holding her note which reads, “Help Me.” She runs from the house, looking anxiously behind her.

Ben approaches his old house, nervous. He runs. Inside, his house looks the same as it did when he left it: “It was like entering a museum of his old life” (68). He hears his mother’s favorite song, “Space Oddity,” playing upstairs. He approaches the door to his mother’s room, remembering an impossible wish he’d made on a shooting star.

Rose wiggles through a hole in the fence around her property and finds herself at the water. The illustrations depict her transforming her note, which reads “Help Me,” into a paper boat and letting it float away. She begins to aimlessly walk through the woods.

Ben opens to the door to find his cousin Janet in his mother’s clothes, smoking his mother’s old cigarettes. She apologizes profusely as Ben begins to cry. She reveals that this was her secret, and she didn’t want anyone to know—she begs Ben not to tell her parents. Ben appreciates his cousin, who has been empathetic in his grief: “We all miss her, you know” (87), Janet reminds him. Ben says he won’t tell if Janet will let him stay in the house for a little while. She agrees, reminding him to come home soon to avoid the coming storm. 

Ben explores his mother’s old bedroom, wondering what he might find there. He searches the closet and drawers and finds an old book with a black cover in the dresser called Wonderstruck. The book is about the history of museums and curation, and is dedicated, “for Danny, love M” (96). The book was put out by the Museum of Natural History in New York. Ben doesn’t recognize the dedication names, but he keeps reading. He thinks about his own penchant for collecting and how he is curating his own museum. He thinks of his box of precious objects: “Maybe he was making a museum about Gunflint Lake” (99).

From the woods, Rose can look down into town and sees a movie theatre playing a show starring Lillian Mayhew, her favorite actress. She clambers down and gets in line to see the showing.

Ben keeps reading as thunder cracks overhead. The book talks about the history of Cabinets of Wonder, which sometimes stretched beyond a cabinet to fill a whole room. The book says, “The viewer was indeed supposed to feel a kind of ‘wonder’ and awe while looking at everything laid out before him. If you’ve ever stood beneath the skeleton of a dinosaur […] you know this feeling of wonder” (109).

Rose looks awestruck in the next image, leaning forward in her seat awaiting the beginning of the film, Daughter of the Storm. The next illustrations are shots from the film, as Lillian Mayhew holds an infant and looks up at a storm crashing down upon her in a field. The images are blurry from heavy rain, but we see a tree bent in the wind and a woman’s figure cowering. Lightning cracks, filling the page.

Back in Ben’s house, lightning strikes and all the lights in the house go out. Ben wants to return to his cousin’s house, but he realizes it is safer to stay inside. He curls up with a flashlight and the book in his mother’s bed, and as he holds the book up, a bookmark tumbles out. It says Kincaid Books on it and has an inscription: “February 1965. Elaine—This piece of me is for you. Please call or write. I’ll be waiting. Love, Danny. Beneath that were a phone number and an address in New York City” (127).

The scene cuts to Lillian Mayhew, who watches as the roof of a house lifts off. The film asks, “Where can we find shelter from the storm?” (130-31).

Ben had never known his mother to have a boyfriend, but now he has evidence of some kind of love affair from the same year he was born. He wonders if Daniel might be his father and if his mother was planning a trip. He plays with the locket at his chest, and a photo of a man tumbles out. The man has Ben’s eyes. The back of the image reads “Daniel” (135). Ben is stunned, and thrilled: “His father wasn’t Major Tom, lost forever among the stars. His father was Daniel and he lived in New York City” (135). Ben picks up the phone and dials the number on the bookmark.

Rose leaves the movie theatre and sees an ad for sound installation at the theatre. She is devastated. The ad says, “Experience 100% All Talking” (146-47). Rose runs from the theatre back home and finds herself in a storm. Lightning cracks overhead.

Ben wakes up on the floor of the room. It is silent, and everything feels hazy and far away. He looks outside and sees the rain still pouring down, but he can’t hear it. He is confused. The phone is next to his hand, smoldering.

Rose runs through the field as lightning strikes around her. She trips and falls, and must pull herself up, soaking wet and shaking. She finally climbs back through her bedroom window.

Ben wakes again in the hospital. He can’t hear anything. A nurse speaks to him and brings him medicine—he doesn’t know what she says. Finally, Aunt Jenny arrives. She writes him a note, explaining that his house was hit by lightning. It traveled through the wires to the phone at his ear. He was being transferred to the children’s hospital in Duluth: “[Ben] looked at his aunt and had a vision of a glowing yellow curtain. Then the seashell turtle appeared, and an old blue book, and then all the images blurred together” (177). The nurse brings him medicine, and he falls asleep.

In her room, Rose finds that her tutor has left a book behind. It is about teaching the deaf to communicate. Rose finds a note from her father, telling her she is in trouble. The book reads, “In the uneducated deaf-mute we see the mind confined within a prison” (188). Rose grabs the book and takes scissors to it, transforming the pages into a paper city in protest. Afterward, she falls asleep on her creation.

Ben has a dream of his life. He sees his mother’s bed and the bookmark floating down to his lap: “Ben smelled cigarette smoke blowing in beneath the door. He heard howling as his bed rose up and drifted into space. He was an alien, circling the North Star as Major Tom waved goodbye […] And there, a million miles below, he saw a wolf […] it was running through the streets of New York City” (195).

Images show Rose the next morning as the sun rises over the water. At breakfast, her father sends her to her room for clipping out an ad about Lillian Mayhew and ruining his paper. She puts the clipping in her scrapbook, packs a small suitcase, and climbs out her window. Illustrations show her at the ferry dock and on a ferry traveling toward New York City.