A young boy becomes an orphan when his father dies. He is adopted by his uncle who teaches him how to take care of the clocks in the Paris train station. After this, the boy tries to fix an automaton (or a "mechanical man"), hoping to find something about his father.
Just the above events would make a great story, but The Invention of Hugo Cabret (A Novel in Words and Pictures) by Brian Selznick has many more exciting events: a long-lost director, a mysterious girl, and silent films! This book is, to my knowledge, the first of its kind because it is a story told with words and spectacular pencil illustrations. The pictures continue what the words said just before. Here is an example from the book: "The curtains parted. A girl looked out. Hugo thought for a second tat he had hit the wrong window, but then he recognized the girl." After that, there is a picture shown of the girl.
SUMMARY
Hugo Cabret's father works with clocks. He also works at the local museum and one night he finds a mechanical man/robot, an automaton. He takes it back home and Hugo convinces him to try to fix it. All seems to be going well...until Hugo's father comes to an unfortunate death. He discovers this when his drunken uncle delivers the news. He takes Hugo to the Paris, France train station where he teaches him how to work on the various clocks.
One night, though, his uncle disappears. Hugo is left alone in the station and must steal food and drink to survive, while working on the clocks. Then, he is caught stealing mechanical parts from the station's local toy maker. The old man takes Hugo's notebook (which belonged to his father) and leaves soon after.
Hugo follows the man to his house and has the door slammed shut in his face. He then meets a young girl who resides with the man and his wife. She says she will help him and the two begin to be friends.
The story continues as mystery after mystery piles up for Hugo and the girl, Isabelle.
CONTENT
There is not a lot of violence in The Invention of Hugo Cabret, but it has some more tense moments. In the first part of the book (there are two parts that comprise the story), Hugo's father dies in an accident. In one scene, Hugo is nearly ran over by a train and the Station Inspector is somewhat rough towards him in the following scene. Also, Hugo's uncle is drunk, but there is not a lot more on this.
This book was very clean, except for one instance where the toy maker uses God's name. Also, while Hugo uses no fowl language, he is rude to the toy maker in several scenes. Once, early on in the story, he spits in front of him.
I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and would like to read Selznick's more recent book, Wonderstruck. It is not hard to see why it won a Caldecott Award, as the storytelling is superb and the drawings are marvelous (Brian Selznick has illustrated many books)! The characters are also delightful, from Hugo to the toy maker (he does have a name, though it would spoil the story). This is a great book just to read alone or read aloud to your family. I would say this is one of my favorite books!
GENERAL INFORMATION
Number of pages: 533
Author of book: Brian Selznick
Published in: 2007
Primary audience: Children, Pre-teens, Teens
Good review, Nolan.
ReplyDelete