When I read that The Invention of Hugo Cabret, an over 500 page novel, won the Caldecott- an award for illustrations in children’s books, I was thoroughly confused. I’ve read a lot of Caldecott books and am quite sure that most of them were under thirty pages. An amazing 284 pages of this book are original drawings. And each picture is an entire double page spread.
Hugo Cabret is a fast read because of all the pictures and the action. I recommend it for grade school children and above. The book is about magicians, illusions, machines, early movie making, and healing loneliness. The format of the book fits the subject and plot so beautifully.
So what is this book? The many illustrations are like watching a movie. The drawings are interspersed with text. According to author Brian Selznick’s website it “is not exactly a novel, and it’s not quite a picture book, and it’s not really a graphic novel, or a flip book, or a movie, but a combination of all these things”.
Hugo is an orphan living in a Paris train station. All he has left of his father is an incredibly complex machine shaped like a man holding a pen at a desk. His father had found it abandoned at a museum and was trying to repair it. One night he is killed in a fire at the museum. Hugo searches the rubble of the fire and finds the automaton, more damaged than ever. He seems to hear a voice in his ear telling him to fix it. He hopes that if can fix the machine, that there will be a message from his father for him.
All Hugo has left is his father’s journal with diagrams on the working of the man, and the automaton. To get parts for the machine, Hugo steals from the train station toy shop. The owner catches him and seizes the notebook. The old man is very upset about the journal and sure Hugo stole it too. Hugo is desperate to get the notebook back and agrees to work in the shop to pay off the things he stole. Hugo makes hesitant friends with Isabelle, the godchild of the old man.
Together Hugo and Isabelle get the automaton to function and are surprised when it signs the name of the toy shop owner, Georges Méliès (pronounced mel-YEZ). He is the inventor of this automaton and one of the early pioneers in making movies. Melies had fallen on such hard times that he had to sell some of his films to shoe companies. His precious film was melted down into shoe heels. Hugo and Isabelle have to convince him to come out of hiding, that the world appreciates his movies again.
To see the beginning of this amazing book, and get more information on the real life history behind the book, go to the official website.
Also See:
2008 Caldecott Winners
Winners of the Caldecott Medal: 1998-2002