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.

- 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

I know it's the point of the book, but I wish the stories' connection was made more clear at the end. I loved the individual stories (beautiful writing and interesting, varying themes) but I expected a more tied up conclusion. It reads more like a short story collection than a single story that's been fractured (Selznick's description from the post script). ( )

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 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. ( )