The Invention of Hugo Cabret

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick (based on 209 customer reviews)

(Hardcover)
Author: Brian Selznick
Publisher: Scholastic Press

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Most useful review as voted by customers:
223 out of 237 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 2/11/07

Curiouser and curiouser

No one can really summarize a book any better than the author proper. So what is, "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" anyway? "... this 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." In short, what you have is a book that can't really be lumped into a single genre. With the rising popularity of the graphic novel, authors have been looking at how to let the visual elements of a given story complement the text. Some will weave graphic novel elements in and out, panels on one page, text on another. Others prefer a kind of "Captain Underpants" melding with cartoonish pictures. And while all these books are fun reads, none of them have ever really had the (for lack of a better word) gravitas you'd find in a classic text-only children's novel. Until now, that is. "Hugo Cabret" is a risk. A 500+ page book that's told just equally by pictures as it is by text. It is also like nothing you've ever seen before. No other children's book has even come close.

Without Hugo Cabret, none of the clocks in the magnificent Paris train station he lives in would work. Though he's only a kid, Hugo tends to the clocks every day. But there's something even more important in the boy's life than gigantic mechanics. Hugo owns a complex automaton, once his father's, that was damaged in a fire and it is his life's goal to make the little machine work again. To do so, he's been stealing small toys from an old shopkeeper in the station. One day the man catches Hugo in the act, and suddenly the two are thrown together. Coincidences, puzzles, lost keys, and a mystery from the past combine in this complex tale of old and new. The story is told with pictures that act out the action and then several pages of text that describe the plot elements. The final effect is like watching a puzzle work itself into clarity.

Selznick is juggling so many different elements and inspirations in this book that you honestly expect the result to be a muddle. Okay. So you have a story involving old-timey movie-maker Georges Melies (he's the old shopkeeper) whose image in this book was modeled on children's book author Remy Charlip (also an influence). You have an automaton, the history of automatons, and the history of movies themselves. There are photographs of old films mixed in with some bizarre sketches. Then you throw all of this together and add in a story about a boy, a girl, a one-eyed man, toys, keys, and a train station. Boom! Instant book. The fact that this title ISN'T a mess is downright bizarre.

They say that the mark of a good musical depends on how well the songs advance the story's plot. You can't just have your characters burst into song and then act like nothing ever happened. The case could be made too for books like "Hugo Cabret". If there is a picture in this story, it has a purpose. Nothing here was included on a whim. When the book breaks from word to image, it has to be done just right. It has to feel natural. At one point in "Hugo Cabret" our hero is nearly trapped by the Station Inspector. The book reads, "The Station Inspector saw the bandages and loosened his grip, at which point, like a wild animal, Hugo escaped." What follows is a thirty-six page chase sequence that comes across like a black and white film. And the real star of this show, in the end, is Selznick's art. The man is doing things with mood and lighting that give the book just the right mysterious feel. Selznick's pictures are done, for the most part in graphite with plenty of shading involved. At the same time, he knows how to get the viewer involved in what they are seeing. There are moments where the "camera" is zooming in on a particular shot and instantly gets your attention. In the book's opening, we begin with a shot of the moon that pulls back and follows young Hugo. Then suddenly, we see Hugo look over his shoulder and the picture hits you hard. We're on the eighteen or nineteenth page and already we're deeply interested in what we're seeing. We want to know more. Hugo does have some magnificent bags under his eyes at times, and he and the old man's granddaughter Isabelle sometimes look rather similar, but on the whole it's hard to find anything wrong with what Selznick has chosen to place in this book.

Admittedly, not everything works as smoothly as it might. Selznick has to keep everything in this story moving constantly. Nobody wants to see picture after picture of people just sitting around and talking, after all. So really, the downside to this kind of book is that some degree of characterization and description is lost in favor of plot and theme. The kids in this book go from liking one another, to hating, to liking again in a manner that feels a tad awkward. Motivations are sometimes murky, even if they're explained later down the line.

But the allure of this book for kids can't be stressed enough. Selznick is most familiar to children, at this point in time, because of his covers of such Andrew Clements books as "Frindle" and "School Story". When kids see a Selznick cover, they know to grab it. Children who like big thick Harry Potter-sized tomes will pluck the multi-colored "Hugo Cabret" from its shelves without hesitation. Ironically, though, this is a perfect title for reluctant readers. Though the page count will scare off some, those who've been shown the insides will appreciate this unfamiliar form of storytelling. Unlike a graphic novel or a picture book, however, you can't understand "Hugo Cabret" through pictures alone. You can try, I guess, but you end up with a very different tale from the one Selznick has written. The nice thing is that in spite of all the complicated details and influences at work here, the story itself is straightforward and interesting.

Extra kudos for the spine of this title, by the way. Publishing houses too often forget that sometimes the spine of a book is all a customer is ever going to see of a title. And if there were a Best Spine of the Year Award, I think I know who the winner might be. The spine and back are of Hugo's face, lit from the side. Just his left eye and part of his cheek are visible on the spine, with the title, author, and publisher information shoved to the bottom. It's haunting. Does haunting sell? You bet your sweet bippy it does.

It's hard to say whether or not this kind of format would work with any other book. Really, it's the fact that so much of "Hugo Cabret"'s plot revolves around black and white movies that allows this book to jump so easily between image and text. If you did something similar with a story about, oh I dunno, a lion in the jungle, it might feel odd. But given Selznick's subject matter and his careful use of both his own illustrations, movie stills, and sketches, the book holds together. The writing is second to the illustrations, but it's still heads and tales better than most of the crummy kidlit you'll stumble across. Sometimes you hold a book in your hands and it feels like a classic from day one. "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" radiates that feeling.

72 out of 73 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 3/13/07

A rich sensory experience...

The Invention of Hugo Cabret, by Brian Selznick, is a children's novel weighing in at an intimidating 533 pages, but the reader brave enough to dive headlong into its pages will find a multi-layered text that consists of not only a delightfully written tale, but rich illustrations that take over the telling of the story at regular intervals. Selznick's creation navigates the grey area between picture book and graphic novel in what certainly constitutes a visual and narrative achievement and a truly original book.

The story opens with a short introduction by one Professor H. Alcofrisbas who writes,

"The story I am about to share with you takes place in 1931, under the roofs of Paris. Here you will meet a boy named Hugo Cabret, who once, long ago, discovered a mysterious drawing that changed his life forever."

Following this delightfully inviting introduction is a black double-page spread with a small picture of the moon in the center of the two pages. Throughout the following pages the frame grows to fill up the entire double-page spread (save a small border of black around the edges, reminiscent of a frame in a film) revealing the sky, the Paris skyline, a train station, and finally our protagonist, Hugo Cabret.

Hugo is a 12-year-old boy strapped with responsibility beyond that which a child should have to shoulder. After his uncle--a hopeless drunk in charge of tending the station's clocks--disappears, Hugo takes it upon himself to maintain the clocks in hopes that his uncle won't be missed and he can keep his dwelling and enjoy the freedom of coming and going, living within the walls, and repairing an artifact cherished by both Hugo and his late father. The artifact at the center of the tale is a forgotten automaton discovered among the dust and rot of a museum storage room. It is a mechanical man, pen in hand, poised to deliver a message; Hugo feels certain that if he can repair the automaton by using his late father's notes, the mechanical man will write a message from beyond the grave. Hugo resorts to stealing toys from the toy booth in the train station, and soon finds himself working off his debt to the shopkeeper, a man with secrets of his own. What follows involves a stolen notebook, an oddly familiar drawing, unlikely friends, the magic of silent film, and a giant in cinema, Georges Melies (the most recognizable of his films being A Trip to the Moon or Le Voyage dans la Lune, 1902).

Brian Selznick has a number of balls in the air with this project: juggling the textual narrative, integrating the illustrated narrative, and a number of allusions and inspirations from classic film, 1930s Paris, and he has to sustain the mystery for 500+ pages, and, of course, making sure his characters are fleshed out and multi-faceted. While I approached the book with a healthy amount of skepticism (as I do almost all books), I have to say that Selznick does an impressive job. And that's possibly the understatement of the year.

While the novel largely defies categorization, it closely resembles a silent film in many respects, and fittingly so. In addition to the novel's rich illustrations, Selznick employs photos and movie stills to show the reader his story as opposed to simply telling it. In the tradition of graphic narrative (or sequential art, whatever your term of choice), the illustrations play as integral a role in the overall story as the text. The use of illustrations is hardly gratuitous, for the pictures quite literally take over and carry out the narrative when the text disappears. And, really, who would care if the illustrations were gratuitous? They're gorgeous.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret is full of magic...for the child reader, for the adult reader, the film lover, the art lover, for anyone willing to give it a go. If you're scared of the size or the concept, don't be. Open your mind, pour Selznick's creation in, and be reminded of the dream of childhood.

53 out of 55 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 2/2/07

Objet d'art

THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET is art of a high order. To start with, this book is a beautiful object. The right dust jacket can definitely sell a book. The graphite rendering of Hugo in extreme close-up gracing the book's spine and wrapping around the back cover is what drew me to the bookshelf in the first place. And upon discovering the book's unusual format, I was hooked. The artwork here does not illustrate the text. Rather it advances the plot. It's a little like watching a silent movie and reading title cards...completely appropriate in a story dealing with the origins of cinema.

The story lives up to the promise of the packaging. It is immediately engaging and ultimately touching. Hugo is the orphaned son of a clock-maker, living in the walls behind a Parisian train station, maintaining the station's clocks, stealing bread and milk to survive, stealing nuts, bolts, and gears to complete a project his father was working on when he died. His secret existence is threatened as his life becomes entwined with a bitter, old man and a bookish young girl. It's part graphic novel, part mystery, part coming-of-age. There are echoes of Pinocchio but with a twist as here it is a lonely boy building an automaton father figure.

This is a timeless book about, among other things, time. This is a book for the ages, and a book for all ages. The story, the artwork, the writing style, the overall design, all first rate parts of a greater whole, like the precisely crafted mechanism of a fine Swiss clock.

19 out of 19 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 1/31/07

Really Truly Extraordinary!

I had a couple hours between work appointments and found this book while browsing about randomly in the bookstore. I just finished it, have only taken the time to ever post one or two other reviews on Amazon but had to post in case anyone is on the fence about buying this book. The story, the orignality of the plot as well as the layout and design, just blew me away. This is one of those rare books I will never ever forget reading for the first time.

18 out of 18 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 1/19/07

Like nothing you've seen before

This is a terrific book, and there's going to be plenty of talk about it, at least in the children's book world. The funny thing is, it's over 500 pages long, and the writing isn't what's going to get the attention. The pictures, though, they're something else. I'm blathering, yet somehow not saying much at all. Let me attempt to make sense....

This is a story about an orphan living in a Paris train station during the 1930's, a magician, and the movies. It also involves a broken clockwork man (aka: the automaton) that just might be able to write, and just might ocntain a message from Hugo's dead father. The film buffs among you will be intrigued to know that Geroges Melies figures into the plot as well. It's a bit of a mystery, a bit of a fantasy, and also bit of a picture book/graphic novel, which is what makes it really interesting.

Brian Selznick's art in this book just knocks me out. The book is fat and heavy, and all the pages are bordered in black. At least 1/3 of it is artwork. But the thing is, the pictures aren't just for decoration. They meld with the story, and make it move. From time to time, the text just stops, and when you turn the page, the plot continues in these fabulous double-page black & white pencil drawings. The drawings function like a cinematic zoom lens, carrying you right into the vital part of the art/story, sometimes carrying on for ten or twelve pages at a time, almost like a sophisticated flip book. If you skip the pictures, you skip a slice of the story.

Here's an example:
"Hugo reached in and pulled out a large, heavy object. He untied the frayed ropes and unwrapped the fabric that covered it."
And then you turn the page and see Hugo looking at "it". And you turn the next page and get a closeup of "it". And no, I'm not going to tell you what "it" is. Read the book.

If that's not enough, the art isn't simply functional, it's also really pretty. As in When Marian Sang, Selznick is very clever about using light and dark to direct your eye exactly where it needs to go, even in a crowded train station scene. And he's fantastic with faces, particularly in closeup. They simply glow. In various places, the characters talk about old movies, and when they do, you get a double-page spread of a still frame from the real film. It's just plain cool. I hope-hope-hope Amazon does that "Search inside this book" feature with Hugo Cabret so you can really see what on earth I'm talking about.

Put this book on your list of things to do this spring. I don't think you'll be sorry, and you just might be dazzled.

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