The Invention of Hugo Cabret

published	2007 by Scholastic Press
binding	Hardcover
isbn	0439813786 (isbn13: 9780439813785)
pages	533
setting	France
literary awards	Caldecott Medal
description	Orphan, clock keeper, and thief, Hugo lives in the walls of a busy Paris train station, where his survival depends on secrets and anonymity. But when ...more [close] Orphan, clock keeper, and thief, Hugo lives in the walls of a busy Paris train station, where his survival depends on secrets and anonymity. But when his world suddenly interlocks with an eccentric, bookish girl and a bitter old man who runs a toy booth in the station, Hugo's undercover life, and his most precious secret, are put in jeopardy. A cryptic drawing, a treasured notebook, a stolen key, a mechanical man, and a hidden message from Hugo's dead father form the backbone of this intricate, tender, and spellbinding mystery.
date added	02-05-07 edit book

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Heather rated it:

08/23/07

Read in August, 2007

recommends it for: anyone!

Twelve-year-old Hugo Cabret lives inside the walls of Gare Montparnasse, a busy Paris train station. Trained by his uncle and guardian to keep the station clocks running, Hugo creeps stealthily through the vents and air shafts. Hugo’s very existence is a well-kept secret. Even the stationmaster doesn’t know Hugo’s uncle has been missing for three months.
Hugo lives in the small apartment at the station that he shared with his uncle. His uncle’s paychecks are piling up because Hugo doesn...more Twelve-year-old Hugo Cabret lives inside the walls of Gare Montparnasse, a busy Paris train station. Trained by his uncle and guardian to keep the station clocks running, Hugo creeps stealthily through the vents and air shafts. Hugo’s very existence is a well-kept secret. Even the stationmaster doesn’t know Hugo’s uncle has been missing for three months.
Hugo lives in the small apartment at the station that he shared with his uncle. His uncle’s paychecks are piling up because Hugo doesn’t know how to cash them. He survives by scavenging food from the trash bins and stealing from the food vendors in the station.
Hugo’s only personal possession is a broken mechanical man, bent over a writing desk and prepared to deliver what Hugo is certain will be a message from his father. His life is framed by loneliness, hunger and a burning desire to repair the automaton.
Hugo’s father, a museum curator, discovered the automaton buried in corner of the museum attic. He often spent hours after his shift tinkering with the gears and other mechanical parts and documenting his efforts in notebooks. The night the museum burned, Hugo’s father was hard at work in the attic. The fire consumed everything, and Hugo became an orphan.
Drawn to the scene of the fire that took his father’s life, Hugo discovers the automaton hidden in the ashes, scorched and more broken than ever. He lugs the mechanical man back to his uncle’s apartment and, using his father’s one surviving notebook, resumes the work his father died trying to complete.
One of the shops in the train station belongs to a toymaker. The parts in his wind-up toys fit the mechanical man perfectly. Hugo watches the bitter old man and his bookish daughter carefully, occasionally stealing toys for parts.
Isabelle, the toymaker’s daughter, has been watching Hugo just as Hugo has been watching her. Intrigued by the boy in the walls, Isabelle pushes her way through his defenses and befriends him. Together, they bring the automaton to life.
The mechanical man does not pen a secret message from Hugo’s father. Rather, he sketches a scene from Georges Méliès’ film, Le Voyage dans la lune. Méliès’ films were lost in World War I, many of them melted down for celluloid to be used in soldier’s boot heels. Méliès himself is believed to be dead. Hugo remembers that Le Voyage dans la lune was his father’s favorite film.
Isabelle’s papa’s reaction to the sketch raises still more questions. For the first time, Hugo wonders if the toymaker’s parts fit the automation by coincidence only.
Brian Selznick has crafted a fascinating mystery based on the true story of innovative French filmmaker Georges Méliès. Each twist is revealed carefully, the shadows drawn away from the truth piece by agonizing piece until the story is fully told.
The illustrations in this book are beautiful and amazingly detailed. Rendered in charcoal, Selznick’s use of shadows lends an added air of mystery to the story. Each of the 300+ illustrations covers a two-page spread and serves to move the story forward without text. The most striking illustrations are in series that cover eight or ten pages. Selznick shifts the frame of each illustration in the series, tightening up the focus or broadening the frame to give his readers the feel of watching the scene through the lens of a camera.
I was completely captivated by the world of Hugo Cabret. The Invention of Hugo Cabret provided the perfect antidote to my post Harry Potter blues this summer. Selznick has joined the ranks of writers such as Lemony Snicket, J.K. Rowling and Marcus Zusak who have proven that juvenile literature isn’t just for kids.
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Jennifer rated it:

02/23/08

bookshelves: children-young-adult, manga-graphic-novels

Read in February, 2008

As I was a little more that 2/3 through The Invention of Hugo Cabret when I started wondering how many stars that I would give it. At first, I was even considering giving it 3 stars, which suprised me since so many people had told me that it was amazing. I have, since settled on giving it 4 starts, because I can't really sum up my first reaction to the work as "It was amazing!" which corresponds to 5 stars. However, now that I have said that, the following criticisms that I h...more As I was a little more that 2/3 through The Invention of Hugo Cabret when I started wondering how many stars that I would give it. At first, I was even considering giving it 3 stars, which suprised me since so many people had told me that it was amazing. I have, since settled on giving it 4 starts, because I can't really sum up my first reaction to the work as "It was amazing!" which corresponds to 5 stars. However, now that I have said that, the following criticisms that I have for it that have prevented me from giving it 5 stars err on the side of "overburdening criticism," namely that the language was somewhat stilted and the characters weren't particularly well-developed. I also may have a bias because I found Isabelle annoying when she kept insisting that Hugo was a thief and a liar and nagging him to reveal his life story. Related to this is one of the other things that I think would've made this novel better, a more complete, but subtle, address of what I think is an important lesson in the story, that people (Hugo, Isabelle, Papa George, etc.) keep secrets that isolate them from others, that keep themselves from forming deeper personal relationships. Now, after pointing out all these criticisms, let me say that, I loved this book. As it was meant, this book spoke to me through the beautiful pictures. Although I said that the language was stilted, one could argue, is it really a sticking point? If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then Brian Selznick (or, if you've read the novel, Hugo's automaton) has spoken a million words.

Although the story was a familiar one insofar as it was reminiscent of a Charles Dickens rags-to-riches story, it explored the rich, largely untapped topic, at least in children's literature, of the beginnings of cinema and the wonder that it inspired. Through his illustrations, especially of the drawings of the labrynthine 1931 Paris train station and ending chase scene (As Hugo states, every movie should end in a good chase scene =), Selznick conveys this wonder, reawakens it, in an audience long accustomed to the magic of movies. Note, I chose to state that Selznick elicits wonder from his audience, not his readers. Initially, I wondered why Selznick didn't use a more standard graphic novel format until I realized, belatedly, that Selznick was using a novel to emulate film to convey the same sense of dreams made real, the feeling that Hugo and his father experienced the first, an every, time that they viewed Georges Méliès's A Trip to the Moon. Selznick succeeded beautifully, this book is a wondrous one, not only for children, but for adults as well, and also a springboard into the history of the origins of cinema. ...less

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Alex rated it:

03/06/08

bookshelves: books-read-in-2007

Read in April, 2007

INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET BY BRIAN SELZNICK: Brian Selznick, who previously has done a mixture of writing and illustration, brings us his greatest creation to date: The Invention of Hugo Cabret. The main character, Hugo, is a young orphan who used to live with his uncle behind the scenes of a Paris train station. Then his uncle died, and Hugo now spends his time, in the late 1930s, winding up and oiling, fixing and maintaining the many clocks and devices around the train station, all alone. He...more INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET BY BRIAN SELZNICK: Brian Selznick, who previously has done a mixture of writing and illustration, brings us his greatest creation to date: The Invention of Hugo Cabret. The main character, Hugo, is a young orphan who used to live with his uncle behind the scenes of a Paris train station. Then his uncle died, and Hugo now spends his time, in the late 1930s, winding up and oiling, fixing and maintaining the many clocks and devices around the train station, all alone. He is rarely seen and actually lives behind the walls, while thousands of people, day to day, travel to make their trains, or disembark for other destinations.

It is on one day that he gets to know the man who owns the newsagents in the train station, after befriending his daughter. The story slowly unfolds that the man is actually George Méliès, one of the most important people in the early days of film, his most famous piece being about four men who traveled to the moon known as A Trip to The Moon, with the memorable image of the dough-like moon with a face grimacing as the bullet-like ship is shot into its eye. Méliès died in 1938, but it is in this story that he lives on working in obscurity at the newsagents. The story unravels further to reveal an inextricable link between Méliès and Hugo.

While this would be an enjoyable story in its own right, Selznick has created a new medium using not just words, or pictures, or illustrations, but incorporating all three into a chronological miasma. The book begins like a movie, with fifty pages of gray illustration as we zoom in on the train station, into the clock and Hugo Cabret. Then there is the start of the story in word form, but instantly switching to illustration again, and then cutting to photographs where necessary. The difference here is that the illustrations are not revealing the written word, but continuing the story of the word. You cannot skip one, or you miss the story. The Invention of Hugo Cabret uses all these forms to make this not just a book, but a collection of illustrations, and a type of movie or flicker-book that are all interwoven to tell the story of Hugo Cabret and his relationship with George Méliès, one of the original geniuses in the early days of film.

For more reviews, and writings, or to buy yourself a copy, please visit www.alexctelander.com....less

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Susan rated it:

11/16/07

bookshelves: fiction-adult, juvenile, young-adult

Read in November, 2007

If there were a rating for sheer coolness factor, this book would score off the charts, but do I approve of coolness for coolness's sake? Apparently in this case, I do. Hugo Cabret is orphaned, broke, and living a secret life behind the walls of a train station as he tries to piece together the story of a mysterious invention that his late father discovered and became obsessed with before his death. Along the way he runs afoul of the law and a crochety old man with a mysterious past who may be a...more If there were a rating for sheer coolness factor, this book would score off the charts, but do I approve of coolness for coolness's sake? Apparently in this case, I do. Hugo Cabret is orphaned, broke, and living a secret life behind the walls of a train station as he tries to piece together the story of a mysterious invention that his late father discovered and became obsessed with before his death. Along the way he runs afoul of the law and a crochety old man with a mysterious past who may be a magician or something else entirely. The book is well over 500 pages long and therefore is not easily portable, but it's an astoundingly fast read, and any kid who balks should be shown that A) about half the book consists of sketchbook-style full page illustrations and B) there are many pages that only have a line or two of type on them. It's an interesting format, and one that is pivotal in one of the plot twists, and often works to heighten already building suspense. The book is a sort of homage to old school cinema, the art of the first movies and of French filmmaker Georges Méliès in particular (although explaining why would give it away) and captures the feel of that world so well and introduces a level of sophistication and allure that I think that YAs as well as grown-up film buffs could easily find a lot to love in this book as well. All this being said, there are some flaws. There is a minor character that really exists for no other reason than for the author to put his friend's name in the book, but makes prominent enough appearances towards the beginning that it initially leads you to think otherwise. There are very grave misunderstandings that cause a lot of danger and trouble to Hugo could have been cleared up quickly and easily with a few words, but he chooses to keep silent for no apparent reason other than to allow the author to spin out the melodrama further. It seems like a bit of a cheap trick, and I suppose it is, but naturally it's effective. There are at least three different chase scenes, a lot of risk and mystery, and a good deal of suspense running throughout. If ever there was a way to do the unthinkable and connect young boys with reading, classic cinema, and art all at once---this is it, and I can't help myself; I think that's pretty darn...cool....less

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Bonnie Gayle rated it:

01/26/08

bookshelves: comic-or-graphic-novel, historical-fiction, library-books, reviewed

Read in January, 2008

recommends it for: fans of sweet stories and creative storytelling methods

For being over 500 pages, this was about a 1 1/2 to 2 hour read, because there is a balance between words, and also full-paged pictures.
You can't talk about the book without talking about the author, who is in the movie business, and the way the pictures in the book told the story directly relates to a way a movie (especially a silent movie) tells a story. The pictures and the words worked together to create a unique and highly effective way to tell a story.

Hugo Cabret is an orphan. He li...more For being over 500 pages, this was about a 1 1/2 to 2 hour read, because there is a balance between words, and also full-paged pictures.
You can't talk about the book without talking about the author, who is in the movie business, and the way the pictures in the book told the story directly relates to a way a movie (especially a silent movie) tells a story. The pictures and the words worked together to create a unique and highly effective way to tell a story.

Hugo Cabret is an orphan. He lives inside of the walls of the Paris train station in the 1930's, and has been keeping the clocks running, secretly, since his Uncle died.

His sole mission, though, is to get an automaton running, which his father found and was trying to fix before his death. To accomplish his mission, Hugo has been stealing gears and small parts from an old man's toy shop in the train station, and using a small notebook full of sketches that belonged to his father. One day, though, he is caught by the old man, who takes his notebook.

Isabelle, the granddaughter of the old man in the shop becomes interested in Hugo, and tries to help him get his notebook back...but little do the two of them know how much Isabelle holds the key to getting the automaton to work.

The story was unique, sweet, and surprising. You have an instant empathy for Hugo, and that empathy helps carry the reader through the story. Getting back to the illustrations, I was surprised to notice how much thought had been put into them, even down to the fact that the single spread illustrations have more detail, so you linger over them longer, yet the multiple page illustrations are less detailed, allowing the reader to flip through them faster, giving the feeling of seeing the action progess, the way it does on a movie screen.

The only issue I have with the book, is, in fact the title. I found it misleading, and wished that the author had come up with another that was more accurate.

This one is highly recommended, and has the feeling of a new classic about it....less

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Jon rated it:

05/07/08

bookshelves: pretty-good-books

Read in April, 2008

recommends it for: pre-teens, cinema lovers

"The Invention of Hugo Cabret" is an interesting book, where the design of the book helps to convey the story through the use of full page illustrations for any "action" in the story. This, along with an unusually spare type layout (some pages just have one paragraph) help this 500+ page book fly by in just a few hours.

The story is of young Hugo Cabret, who lives in the Paris train station in the early 1930's. Fate has left Hugo as an orphan, who alone tends the clocks...more

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Carissa rated it:

04/28/08

bookshelves: juvenile

Read in June, 2007

this book has been on my bedside table for awhile with that “i really should read this” look about it. i finally picked it up yesterday and resigned myself to a long, thick read and was delighted to discover, when i opened the book, that it’s about half illustrations and not text dense at all! in fact, it’s as close to an even mix of “graphic novel” and “novel novel” as i’ve seen –except that the illustrations don’t have any dialogue in them and aren’t laid out comic-book...more

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Claudia rated it:

05/13/08

bookshelves: graphic-novels

Read in January, 2010

(CIP) When twelve-year-old Hugo, an orphan living and repairing clocks within the walls of a Paris train station in 1931, meets a mysterious toyseller and his goddaughter, his undercover life and his biggest secret are jeopardized.

(Claudia) This award-winning graphic novel, set in and around a Paris train station in 1931, is a wonderful mix of beautifully rendered double-page pencil drawings, cinematic techniques, and suspenseful storytelling. The realistically detailed illustrations follow...more

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Lindsey rated it:

03/07/08

bookshelves: tweens

Read in March, 2007

Part one finds Hugo Cabret living in a Paris train station and stealing mechanical toys. He is caught by the owner of the toy stand, who takes from Hugo a notebook that was in his pocket. Hugo is determined to get the notebook back, and finally the shopkeeper agrees to hire him on to work in the store to pay off his debt.

In the meantime we find out that Hugo lives alone in the train station; his father died, his uncle disappeared, and Hugo is left alone to continue maintenance on the tra...more

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Ukrainer rated it:

05/16/08

Read in May, 2008

Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret has been racking in the awards. It was a 2007 National Book Award finalist and won the mother of all children’s awards: the 2008 Caldecott Medal.

Hugo Cabret is a young French orphan with many secrets. He lives in a Paris train station where he keeps the clocks running, but his life changes when he meets a toy seller and his goddaughter.

The book’s thickness, at over 500 pages, is initially intimidating. Physically, the tome is unw...more

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Rebecca rated it:

06/12/07

bookshelves: childrenslit, if-stranded-on-a-deserted-island

recommends it for: People trapped in elevators with nothing else to read

***NOTE: This book is on my if-stranded-on-a-deserted-island shelf solely for use as a firestarter- it is rather large and I can rip out and roll up its many pages into convenient bits of kindling.***

A royal disappointment. I am glad I got this from the library, instead of purchasing it for $22. Far from the "stunning, cinematic tour de force" that it alleges to be on the front flap, this book fails in its attempt to "combine elements of picture book, graphic novel, and f...more

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buddylove24 added it

10/17/07

The invention of Hugo Cabret is a book about a boy living buy himself. His father died in a fire at a museum. The only things he has left to remember his father is an automaton which is this robot of some sort and a notebook of sketches of the automaton. Hugo and his father were working on it until he died. After Hugo’s dad died was sent to go live with his uncle. He lived in a railroad station. His uncle was a drunk and died by drowning in a river. Hugo was left by himself in the railroad ...more

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Caroline rated it:

02/16/08

bookshelves: childrens, graphic-novels, read-in-2008

Read in February, 2008

This is a very interesting story of a young orphan boy, Hugo Cabret, who works as a clock keeper after his uncle mysteriously disappears. At the same time, he steals small clockwork devices from the local toymaker in order to work on an automaton that his father had been trying to repair before his death.

The automatons were a neat subject which I knew little about, so it was extra-fun to learn a little about that (I'm definitely going to be pulling up more information about them!). Selznick ...more

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Ryan rated it:

01/31/08

bookshelves: drama, ya

Read in January, 2008

recommends it for: 3rd grade on up

Okay, I picked this book up knowing only a couple things. It won the 2008 Caldecott award. It's thick. Like 530 some pages thick. That interested me because I'd guess the Caldecott winners aren't usually anywhere near this many pages. So I figured there must be something to this massive 'kids' book.

I thumbed through it enough to see there were a lot of pencil-on-paper drawings set up graphic novel-ish. Also there are a handful of photographs and then a regular novel-novel tossed in t...more

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Dustin rated it:

08/11/07

Read in August, 2007

recommends it for: all

"Did you ever notice that all machines are made for some reason?" he asked Isabelle. "They are built to make you laugh, like the mouse here, or to tell the time, like clocks, or to fill you with wonder, like the automaton. Maybe that's why a broken machine always makes me a little sad, because it isn't able to do what it was meant to do."

..."Maybe it's the same with people," Hugo continued. "If you lose your purpose...it's like you're broken."
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Christina rated it:

11/06/07

bookshelves: odd

Read in October, 2007

recommends it for: everyone!!

Can I give it SIX stars?? I really really love this book! It's like watching a silent movie, in book form. It's a mysterious, heartwarming tale about an orphan boy who hides in a Paris train station, keeping the clocks running, hoping to one day uncover the secret of the little mechanical man left him by his father. It's the story of magic: the magic of clockworks, the magic of magic tricks, and the magic of the movies. It's about finding secrets, about rediscovering your past and reinventing yo...more

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Medford Children's Library added it

09/27/07

recommends it for: comic book fans, people who like movies and a great story, mystery fans

The scene is Paris, France 1929, Hugo Cabret, a twelve year old orphan and aspiring magician lives in the clock keeper's apartment at the train station with his uncle until he mysteriously disappears. Hugo must keep the clocks in the station in working order or he will surely be discovered and thereby thwart his secret project. What is his secret project you ask? Well, I'll give you a hint. While learning skills from his horologist (clockmaker) father before his death, Hugo is able to fix and cr...more

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Jolie rated it:

05/16/08

bookshelves: read-alouds-with-kids

We discovered this book as a family last year, and it quickly became a favorite of not only ours, but our extended family and the kids' classmates and teachers, too. What makes this book magical are the detailed pictures that are so much more than mere illustrations. Selznick's story revolves around silent films and the role that magicians and their automata played in them (an odd choice for children's lit, and yet it works--opening their eyes to a very different world of entertainment than th...more

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LFPL Teen Services rated it:

09/04/07

bookshelves: coming-of-age, must-reads, mystery, reluctantreaders

Read in September, 2007

recommends it for: artsy teens;

Hugo is living a secret life in a Paris train station. No one knows he's alive, and he'd like to keep it that way. His uncle, has disappeared and is most likely dead. He works within the walls of the train station, keeping the many clocks in working order. Stealing food, milk and tiny toy parts, Hugo ekes out some kind of living.

His father, also dead, was an amazing man who rescued an automaton (look it up in the dictionary) from a museum fire and loved the fantastical films of Georges Miel...more

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Jeff rated it:

04/06/08

bookshelves: 2008

Read in April, 2008

I might actually be too much of a snob to enter a children's book as a reading achievement, but it's a 500-page children's book, and anyway I read it aloud to my children over the course of several weeks, and I feel pretty durn validated by the effort.

I have a 5-year-old and a 4-year-old. My ex-wife and I have labored mightily over the years to instill a love of reading in our kids. I could see the dividends of that in the way they'd talk about this book when we were away from it, or...more