Attending school at Rhode Island School of Design, Brian studied theater set design. After graduation he worked at Eeyore’s Books for Children in Manhattan, New York. His manager, Steven Geck (today, editor at Greenwillow Books) became his mentor. Geck’s assignment for him every night was to take a bag of chapter books and 15 to 20 picture books home to read and learn from. While working at Eeyore’s Brian wrote his first book titled, The Houdini Box.

Brian did not know her by name or occupation but one of his regular customers at Eyeore’s was HarperColllins’ editor, Laura Geringer. After his first book came out Geringer came up to him at the book store and said she would like to work with him. His first illustrating project, Doll Face Has a Party came under her direction.

Brian’s 533-page illustrated novel, The Invention of Hugo Cabret took three trips to France to research and two years to write. The result is a unique book that has more drawings than words and in the works, plans for a movie. When questioned about The Invention of Hugo Cabret Brian said, “I wanted the book to read like a movie because the story is very much about the history of cinema. I used different techniques from film, like close ups, edits, pans, long shots, to help tell the story.” The Invention of Hugo Cabret has won too many awards to list all of them but a few are; 2008 Caldecott Medal, National Book Award Finalist, and A New York Times Best Illustrated Book of 2007.

Selznick travels extensively for every book project he works on while dividing his time between living in Brooklyn, New York, and San Diego, California.

Terri DeGezelle