There is a bolt of lightning streaking across the cover of the upcoming novel Wonderstruck from Brian Selznick. Fitting, considering how reading his novels tend to leave me speechless, impressed, and, well, feeling like I’ve been struck by something wonderful.

Moments ago, Publishers Weekly revealed the cover of Wonderstruck, which hits stores in the US, UK, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada on September 13, 2011; School Library Journal also talks about it here. Selznick, in case you need a refresher, won the Caldecott Medal for The Invention of Hugo Cabret, which is soon to be a major motion picture directed by Martin Scorsese; that novel, his debut, was also a National Book Award finalist, a PW Best Book of the Year, and a  New York Times Best Illustrated Book. (Here’s a neat video of the author discussing the audiobook version of Hugo!)

Wonderstruck has more than 460 pages of original drawings, some of which you can see in this very blog post, after the jump!

The book tells the tale of Ben and Rose, who secretly wish their lives were different: Ben longs for the father he has never known, while Rose dreams of a mysterious actress whose life she chronicles in a scrapbook. When Ben discovers a puzzling clue in his mother’s room and Rose reads an enticing headline in the newspaper, both children set out alone on desperate quests to find what they are missing. Set fifty years apart, these two independent stories–Ben’s told in words, Rose’s in pictures–weave back and forth with mesmerizing symmetry.

Who else is going to be counting down until its September release? Let us know in the comments!