Hugo Cabret
Oct. 26th, 2007 09:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
checkers65477This week I read The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. I'd heard good things about it but had put off reading it, for no good reason, really. Well, all I can say is that you should get to the library very, very soon to find this book. I began reading it at work during my lunch breaks (ha! lunch breaks! What a novel concept! Don't work in a school library if you actually expect these!). I found myself glaring at people who interrupted me, thinking, "Leave me alone. I have to find out what happens to Hugo."
Look for this to win awards this year.
The book is written at a lower level, appropriate for elementary and middle school. What makes it so ground-breaking is that it tells its story in text and illustrations (artwork, really) but in a different way. You read pages of text, then you look at illustrations, sometimes one and sometimes several. But the art doesn't just supplement the text; the illustrations tell the story, too. The reader must pay attention to them to understand what's going on in the story. The illustrations tell the story as much as the text.
It's a hefty book -- 533 pages -- and that's part of the reason I put off reading it, but it's a quick read with largish print, 284 pages of illustrations, and lots of white space on the pages. Much of the book is done on black pages, adding to the feel, which I'll get into in a minute. The lovely illustrations are black, white and graytone; pencil drawings that are clean and simple with lots of shading. Hugo, especially, is done wonderfully. His plaintive face is sad, haunting, and lovely.
The book tells the story of Hugo Cabret, a 12-year-old orphan living in France in the 1930s. He has been left by a relative to maintain all the clocks in the Paris train station, and lives in a hidden room there, undetected by adults. His father has left him with a mystery -- a clockwork automaton with a pen in its hand, which Hugo is certain would write a message from his deceased father, if it wasn't broken. Hugo is a talented mechanic and works to repair the mechanical man, stealing parts from a mysterious toy maker. Hugo has many secrets and a strong message in the book is that he can't truly have friends or be loved unless he is willing to trust others enough to tell them about himself.
The book has a tremendous "feel" and sense of atmosphere about it. It is as if you are watching an old movie, and movies play an enormous part in the plot. Without realizing it, you learn about old-time movies and the time period comes alive. Selznick has put this all together in a miraculous way. It first appears to be very simply done, and for this reason I didn't really expect to like the book, but it has incredible depths.
It's a hefty book -- 533 pages -- and that's part of the reason I put off reading it, but it's a quick read with largish print, 284 pages of illustrations, and lots of white space on the pages. Much of the book is done on black pages, adding to the feel, which I'll get into in a minute. The lovely illustrations are black, white and graytone; pencil drawings that are clean and simple with lots of shading. Hugo, especially, is done wonderfully. His plaintive face is sad, haunting, and lovely.
The book tells the story of Hugo Cabret, a 12-year-old orphan living in France in the 1930s. He has been left by a relative to maintain all the clocks in the Paris train station, and lives in a hidden room there, undetected by adults. His father has left him with a mystery -- a clockwork automaton with a pen in its hand, which Hugo is certain would write a message from his deceased father, if it wasn't broken. Hugo is a talented mechanic and works to repair the mechanical man, stealing parts from a mysterious toy maker. Hugo has many secrets and a strong message in the book is that he can't truly have friends or be loved unless he is willing to trust others enough to tell them about himself.
The book has a tremendous "feel" and sense of atmosphere about it. It is as if you are watching an old movie, and movies play an enormous part in the plot. Without realizing it, you learn about old-time movies and the time period comes alive. Selznick has put this all together in a miraculous way. It first appears to be very simply done, and for this reason I didn't really expect to like the book, but it has incredible depths.
Look for this to win awards this year.
