Meticulous, amorous, and atmospheric pencil drawings bookend text in Run Away with Me, Brian Selznick's tender and sentimental young adult debut. The Caldecott Medal-winner's compelling queer love story takes place in Rome in 1986 and is augmented by histories, mysteries, legends, and relationships from earlier eras, all of which add to the wonder of the young couple's heady, magical summer.

Selznick's ode to Rome and romance opens with a visual essay, a sequence of black-and-white drawings that meander through the city, highlighting art and architectural marvels on both a grand and an intimate scale. There is a lone figure exploring the empty streets and buildings, lending an eerie, dreamlike quality to the art and this illustrated prologue. Text follows the images, revealing it is "the first day" and a 16-year-old American boy has woken in an empty church. He's "fascinated and saddened" by a pair of life-size painted angels, "shirtless and beautiful," gazing at each other across the room. The young man, who is in Rome only because his mother has taken a job with the esteemed Monda Museum and Book Conservancy to decipher a rare, recent find, spends his time exploring the city by himself. He feels uncharacteristically restless, adrift in this place that holds only vague echoes from a previous visit when he was five. Inexplicably, he feels "an invisible presence" following him, "demanding [he] keep moving" toward some "unknown destination."

Then, "out of the emptiness of the endless rain," a broken sculpture seems to shout "Wait!" The boy finds a note taped to the base of this twisted statue that stands out from the many others written in Italian. It's a hand-drawn map with no words, names, or dates, that points to a location not far from where he stands: an obelisk perched on the back of an elephant. The riddle is irresistible. The boy finds his way to the destination and there meets another boy about his age. This young man, whose "dark curly hair" is "glistening with rain," begins speaking in English, talking as if the two are already in the middle of a conversation.

The dark-haired boy insists he has no name and asserts he will call the first boy Danny. Instructed, in turn, to name the new boy, now-Danny recalls the two angels on the church ceiling and quickly blurts out "Angelo." Danny is acutely aware of Angelo's body--his chipped tooth, his curls, the way he's a little out of breath--and knows immediately he "would follow him anywhere." When Angelo holds out his hand Danny takes it, and together the pair fall "off the edge of the world, into the dark wild abyss of Rome."

Angelo peels back the "layers of history, built one on top of the other" as the young men visit the Mouth of Truth, a Byzantine crypt, and an ancient river running "nonstop beneath the city for all of eternity." Real life takes a backseat to the intoxicating experience of exploring Rome together, as does the finite nature of their newfound bond; when summer ends, Danny and his mother will leave Rome, bound for a new job in a new location. It is inevitable there will be a heartrending separation, but neither boy has the will to examine this too closely yet. As the young men fall into the magic of Rome, they fall into love with each other.

Tours through the city and deep dives into the art and architecture of Rome are enhanced by detailed stories that move seamlessly between past and present. Angelo tells Danny about the obelisk on the elephant's back and how its sculptor, Dante Ferrata, loved first an elephant and then a sailor, and left a book of "shipboard love poems" in his wake. Together, the young men learn about the brothers Monda and how their bibliophilia led to the creation of their museum dedicated to "help[ing] any book whose life is in serious danger." And the couple is introduced to the story of Elijah and Isak, young Jewish refugees who bonded over their love of cinema; although their affair was short, they remain immortalized "for as long as the movie exists" as extras in the 1951 film Quo Vadis. Love, mystery, and tragedy, too, infuse all these chronicles with a bittersweet sense of promise only partially fulfilled. Remarkably, Danny and Angelo also discover that the mysterious work Danny's mother is doing may be connected to all these histories with which they are becoming acquainted.

Big Tree and Kaleidoscope author/illustrator Selznick's prose weaves together four stories of mostly hidden, sometimes forbidden queer love and loss, all of which are connected through time by art, architecture, and a sense of shared history. Danny has long felt untethered due to the nomadic nature of his mother's specialized work. Although his life comes with "no stability, no permanence," he seems to find a home (for however brief the time may be) in Rome and in Angelo. To do this, Danny must break away from his mother, allowing Selznick to explore a classic coming of age within the larger romance of his novel. Angelo, in turn, presents himself as the embodiment of Rome--a character in its own right--even initially giving his age as that of the city: 2,738 years, two months, and seven days. Angelo's fanciful nature beautifully enhances the sense of mystery and magic at work in the text, as do the enigmatic drawings which both open and close the narrative. The monochromatic, cross-hatched art is finely detailed, zooming in and out of scenes, panning through the city in much the way a film camera might, providing readers with a tactile sense of what is to come.

Run Away with Me, deftly anchored by the compelling 1986 romance between Danny and Angelo, spins back and forth through time and connects humans, ghosts, and legends. Selznick's YA debut is driven by passion: for another, for history, for Rome itself. --Lynn Becker

Brian Selznick (photo: Brittany Cruz-Fejeran)

Brian Selznick's books have sold millions of copies, garnered countless awards worldwide, and been translated into more than 35 languages. His genre-breaking, New York Times bestselling trilogy, which began with Caldecott Medal-winner The Invention of Hugo Cabret, was followed by Wonderstruck and The Marvels. He and his husband divide their time between Brooklyn, N.Y. and La Jolla, Calif. You can find more information in Scholastic's Mediaroom.

Selznick's debut novel for young adults, Run Away with Me (Scholastic Press, April 1, 2025), is an unforgettable coming-of-age love story inspired by the author's time in Rome during the Covid-19 pandemic. Selznick spoke to Shelf Awareness about how his visit to the ancient city inspired the book and how he went about creating it.

How would you describe Run Away with Me to readers?

The book is a love story between Danny, an American boy, and Angelo, an Italian boy. During the summer of 1986, Danny is in Rome with his mom, who is working on a project about a mysterious old book. While there, he meets Angelo, who seems to know a thousand stories about Rome and every hidden corner of the city. Woven into the narrative are three other love stories, one in the 1600s, one in 1900, and one in 1940. Ultimately the book is about the ability to find love and joy even when the society in which you live doesn't want you to.

In the book's acknowledgements, you talk about how Run Away with Me was inspired by your time in Rome.

My husband is a historian and a professor, and during the pandemic he won something called the Rome Prize for a project he was writing about an Italian architect. We were brought to Rome in January of 2021 for nine months, along with the other winners and their families. The city, like all cities around the world, was mostly shut down, so we had the place almost entirely to ourselves. I was often the only person besides the guards at the Sistine Chapel, and my husband and I found ourselves pretty much alone in the Pantheon and the Colosseum. It was an extraordinary experience. We often traveled with the other Rome Prize winners, who were all studying fascinating things about the city. They'd share their knowledge with us, and I kept thinking, "That should be in a book!" Run Away with Me is that book. It brings together all my favorite places and experiences in the city, as seen through the lens of two teenage boys experiencing love for the first time.

There is so much reverence for art, architecture, and history in this book. How did it feel to use them as a launchpad for your own creativity and then weave in fictional elements?

Everywhere you go in Rome, history is made visible, from the stones in the street to the paintings on the church walls. There's a great word, "palimpsest," which means "something that bears the traces of its own past," sort of like the ability to look back in time. All of Rome is a palimpsest. You can see modern life, and elements of history going back thousands and thousands of years, pretty much everywhere you go. I wanted to capture this feeling in the book. 

Why did you choose to bookend this novel with your art, as opposed to weaving it into the story itself, as you've done with many of your previous works?

Originally, I wanted to have no drawings in the book, which would have been radical for me, since all my books so far have had pictures. But my editor David Levithan felt strongly that images could benefit the story. We came up with the idea of opening the book with a long visual sequence through an almost empty version of Rome, much like I experienced it during the pandemic (though the story does not take place during the pandemic). I realized this could give all readers the feeling that they've been through the city, even those who have never been there. So, when you read the story, and I mention the Pantheon with the round hole (or "oculus") in the ceiling, you'll remember having seen it in the opening sequence. Basically, what I am doing is using the opening sequence to give everyone a memory of having been in Rome. As for the end sequence, David and I thought that a mysterious visual conclusion might work really well. I always suggest to people when they first pick up the book to try not to flip to the end to look at the drawings. I know it's hard not to look, but I think it might work best for those drawings to come as a surprise at the end.

What do you hope readers will take away from Run Away with Me?

I started writing this book very much aware of the rise in censorship that's happening with books about and by queer people. There seems to be a belief that if we can keep books about queerness away from young people, no young people will grow up to be gay. But, of course, that's not how it works at all. We've always existed, and we always will. We have always managed to find ways to be with each other, to discover that we are not alone in the world, and to learn that we have a history and a future. I wanted to write a story that illuminated this idea, which is why my four love stories each take place in a time when there is no acceptance or real public understanding of queerness. Things were changing in 1986 when the main story takes place, which I touch on in the book, but it was still something that was hidden or (mostly) kept out of the popular culture. I wanted to let young people today know that even if it doesn't seem like it's possible, your community is out there, waiting for you. We all deserve to be happy, to find our communities, and to fall in love. 

What are you working on now?

I really loved writing this love story. It's my first book for a young adult audience, and I've decided that I'd like to write more. I've begun my next romance, which is set in a different time and a different city than Run Away with Me. It's been really exciting to start fresh with two new young people who need each other more than they first realize.

Is there anything else you'd like readers to know?

There are lots of great organizations dedicated to helping young queer people, and everyone who wants a safe place to explore their identities. Two of my favorites were started by a friend of mine, the extraordinary Celeste Lescene. They are the Trevor Project, which has counselors you can speak to for free 24 hours a day, and the Future Perfect Project, which is dedicated to producing and facilitating "creative workshops, media projects, and performance opportunities for LGBTQIA+ youth & allies, ages 13-22." --Lynn Becker