”From his perch behind the clock, Hugo could see everything.”

From Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret.

In an early 20th-Century train station in France, orphaned Hugo Cabret lives in a train station where he winds the clocks of the station. Tragedy has left Hugo alone in the world and hiding; the death of his father followed by the death of his guardian has placed this young boy in a position where he must continue to live behind the station walls and wind the clocks of the station to stay unnoticed. When he is not winding clocks, trying to repair the automata machine (think complex wind-up toy) that his father had left behind, or stealing food to survive, Hugo likes to watch the people that come through the station each day. He watches the commuters and shopkeepers from various lookouts in the walls (grates, cracks, giant clocks, etc.). One of the shops that he watches most often is the toy store, which is run by an old man (Papa Georges) and his young goddaughter (Isabella). Hugo befriends Isabella after after he tries to steal something from the toy store; the girl sways Papa Georges from having Hugo arrested, and just like that, Hugo is pulled out of the shadows of the station into an adventure he never could have even imagined. The two children embark on a journey to discover more about the Hugo’s malfunctioning automata and a filmmaker from the silent movie era that all seem to be somehow connected. It is up to Hugo to solve the mysteries, protect his new friends, and help right the wrongdoings of the past.

Selznick’s 300-plus-paged picture book (yes, it’s classified as a picture book) is captivating, to say the least. To just say that the illustrations are beautiful and help to enhance the reading experience is similar to calling an orchestra’s performance just music. The artwork takes up the majority of the book, but it enhances the story on multiple levels for readers of all ages; while the illustrations visually shows the story, they also show a separate story at the same time. The reader can look at the artwork and see the world literally through Hugo’s eyes. The character of Papa Georges is based on a real man, so there is an aspect of historical fiction that is blended well, but the other characters are not any less believable because they are completely fictional. Every character that Hugo interacts with are open, honest, and grown as the story progresses. Each aspect of the story is fairly accurate for the time period, but Selznick does a wonderful job presenting the world of the book in fresh, new ways. A major portion of the book is centered around the works of Melies as a filmmaker, who in real life was a revolutionary in cinematography. I would recommend the print version over the audiobook, because even the movie adaptation can’t compare to the gorgeous illustrations. The Invention of Hugo Cabret is a rather quick read, but almost impossible to forget.