The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Don’t worry; this gripping 534-page tale of mystery can sweep you through its pages in a single day, especially since its gritty-but-stunning brown and white artwork acts like a movie as it speeds you and a young orphaned boy through an underground train station and across the streets of Paris and up a clock tower in 1931. Why was the boy’s dead father obsessed with repairing a broken clock? And who is the mysterious angry old man anyway?

Hugo Cabret is not your average kid. He lives a secretive life alone in the wall of a Paris train station and is responsible for keeping the clock on time. One day, he meets an eccentric girl and an even more eccentric old man. With this unlikely trio, we go on a mystery hunt that involves a cryptic drawing, an automaton, a stolen key, and a hidden message from Hugo’s dead father. We picked this book because it’s so unique: a mesmerizing blend of graphics, fiction, and history. Although Hugo is an invented character, the old eccentric man is based… show more.

Cheating a bit here but this is a wonderful hybrid of half-novel, half-wordless picture reel. Both the verbal and the visual brain get a great workout as you slide from following the story through words, then through images, then words, back to images. Set in a train station in 1930s Paris, it is a story full of adventure, clocks, orphans, secrets, movie reels, wild chases, and a mysterious automaton. It is a whopper of a book but a really quick read. I’ve given this one to kids who are struggling to read full-length novels and they’ve been enthralled. I would… show more.