The Invention of Hugo Cabret: A Review

Throwback Thursday!

“The story I am about to share with your takes place in 1931, under the roofs of Paris. Here you will meet Hugo Cabret, who once, long ago, discovered a mysterious drawing that changed his life forever.

But before you turn the page, I want you to picture yourself sitting in the darkness, like the beginning of a movie. On screen, the sun will soon rise, and you will find yourself zooming toward a train station in the middle of the city. You will rush through the doors into a crowded lobby. You will eventually spot a boy amid the crowd, and he will start to move through the train station. Follow him, because he is Hugo Cabret. His head is full of secrets, and he’s waiting for his story to begin” – The Invention of Hugo Cabret, by Brian Selznick

Sometimes the opening of a novel has me leaning in, kind of holding my breath in anticipation of where it is about to take me. Can you feel that? Are you following Hugo through that Parisian train station in your mind? I took the opposite road into this book than I normally do; I saw the movie first. The movie is called Hugo and it was so magical and touching that after watching it last winter with my kids, I wanted to go find the novel that inspired it. The story follows a young boy, Hugo, who has been orphaned. He lives in the walls of a train station in Paris and steals to survive. He also steals to get the parts he needs to rebuild his automaton – a mechanical man that is the last thing he has that remains of his father. When Hugo is caught stealing from the toy store in the station, his life changes. What follows is ordinary magic: movies and books, friendship and family – breathing life into the past.

The reason I wanted to feature Hugo Cabret this month is because it made me see books in a different way. The author, Brian Selnick tells the story in traditional text and pencil drawings that are arresting in and of themselves. What makes the novel so unique is that his art doesn’t accompany the text, it replaces it –  for pages and pages – so the story is literally told in words and images. His ability to flip between the two mediums allows him to convey different aspects of the story in a way that is so compelling – he creates an intimacy through the words and drawings that is unlike conventional novels.

Selznick’s inspiration for the book was, ” … a book called Edison’s Eve: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life … the book told the true story of a collection of elaborate, mechanical wind-up figures (known as automata), which were donated to a museum in Paris. The collection was neglected in a damp attic and eventually had to be thrown away. I imagined a boy finding those broken, rusted machines, and at that moment, Hugo and his story were born.” In his attempt to fix the automaton, Hugo meets Isabelle and her guardian, Papa Georges. This meeting also brings Hugo into the world of movies, something his father had loved,  and Selznick includes stills from the early films Hugo and Isabelle watch to further his story.

The combination of text, art and film all serve to reinforce the important role that stories play in our lives. Selznick’s decision to root the fantastical story of Hugo’s experience in the history of automata and early film makes it both more believable and more magical. This is a beautiful book – both in terms of the story it conveys and the ways in which Selznick is able to combine the text with his drawing and the archival photographs. Whether it is for you, or for a young person in your life, I think The Invention of Hugo Cabret is a book that can really be savored for the way it celebrates story and art by getting us to follow Hugo through that train station in Paris a long time ago.