Brian Selznick combines the art of language and the art of design in his book Wonderstruck. I am particularly enthralled with this one because it talks about the World’s Fair in Manhattan and the panaroma that was made for that show.
I just recently read Devil in the White City and found out that the ferris wheel was created as part of the Chicago World’s Fair and was flabbergasted to realize I had never thought about when or why the ferris wheel was created. It just had always been a part of my experience and knowledge-base and so I didn’t question it.
I think that’s why reading is becoming even more important because so many of us look at the world around us and don’t ask why. We are constantly flooded with new technology and new inventions and so they don’t seem revolutionary. What if we instead, like Ben in Wonderstruck, started collecting and curating our lives as we experience them. What if we tucked away little pieces of wonder that we encountered so that when we met someone new or needed a reminder of where we had been, we could just enter the cabinet of wonder that is our life and remember. After all, “we are all cabinets of wonder,” aren’t we?
