Selznick, Brian. 2007. The Invention of Hugo Cabret. New York: Scholastic Press.
With a talent for bringing mechanical objects to life, Hugo Cabret lives in a Parisian train station, stealing food when he must as he works to bring an automaton, the last connection he has to his father, back to working order.
The beauty of Selznick’s illustrations lies in the attention he pays to subtle details and to careful shading. The page that visually introduces the reader to Hugo is striking; despite a jam packed crowd that nearly swallows the small boy, Selznick makes Hugo’s presence jump out with an absence of dark shading. It’s as though there’s a halo of light surrounding him, drawing the eye directly to where he stands. The black and white color scheme was a thoughtful match to the film stills included in the story, echoing, in fact, the palette that adorned those first films, but it also had the remarkable effect of making the reader believe that the story was fresh in their hands; I often took my hand from a page and looked to my fingers to see if the charcoal had smudged.
As miraculous as the illustrations are, however, the text portion of the story is powerful and emotionally impacting. Selznick, with simple words and turns of phrase, crafted sympathetic characters who often met with as much heartbreak as they did success. Tied up with the fictional world of Cabret, too, was a bit of film history; the depth of the story is most appreciated after the reader discovers more about George Melies, and his contribution to early film..
Adding to the satisfaction of reading the book and wondering over its illustrations, Scholastic has a website that plays the first sequence of the story as though it were a film, and also includes pictures of the models Selznick used to create Hugo, Papa Georges, and others.
