Comment

Mar 01, 2019IndyPL_SteveB rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
Winner of the Caldecott Award for outstanding art in a children’s book and the basis for the fine film, *Hugo*. Every once in a while there is a book (or film or album or painting) that breaks new ground, that makes everyone step back and say, “Wow, you can do that?” This was one of those books. Hugo Cabret is an orphan living in a train station in Paris in 1931. His mother died in child birth and his clock-repairman father died in a fire at a museum. Hugo was taken in (more like “seized”) by his drunken uncle who kept the clockworks running at the train station. But his uncle has disappeared and Hugo, unknown to station management, has been repairing and winding the clocks himself, stealing food to survive. Hugo has another secret. From the ruins of the burned-down museum where his father died, Hugo recovered the automaton that his father had been trying to repair. There is someone else in the train station with a secret past: the mysterious old man who runs the toy shop. This is historical fiction partly based on real events, including the early history of the movies. But the true marvels of the book are the layout and illustrations. This is the first “picture-book novel.” The book is 520 pages long but more than half the pages are double-page drawings that tell the story without words. Selznick’s illustrations are art pieces in themselves and provide us with a story experience different from anything else ever done. The sense of life and motion in each drawing is startling. The reading level of the words is probably 5th-6th grade but the ideas are interesting enough for adults, too. It is not exaggerating to call this a work of genius and one of the 10 most important children’s books of the past 20 years.