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Hugo Cabret, a young horologist, is left alone in the world when his father is accidentally killed in museum fire. For a time he lives with his gruff, alcoholic uncle who keeps the clocks running on time in a Paris train station. Hugo is deeply unhappy with his uncle and resolves to run-away. His path accidentally passes the ruins of the museum where his father died. In the rubble, he discovers the remains of an automaton, which they had worked on before his father’s untimely demise. He rescues the machine from the trash heap and carts it home to the train station for repairs. He believes if he can fix the machine it will somehow have a message for him from his father. When one evening the uncle fails to return home, and Hugo is left to fend for himself, working single-handedly to keep the clocks in good order and stealing croissants and milk just to survive. Food isn’t the only thing that Hugo steals, however, and although he hates stealing, he makes exceptions for parts for the machine, which he steals from the toy store. He surveilles the store regularly and notices a young girl, who is perhaps the shopkeepers granddaughter. He is also always on the lookout for the Station Master.
One day the hapless Hugo is caught red-handed by the toy store owner, Papa George. Forced to turn out his pockets, Papa George confiscates a notebook containing drawings and designs for the automaton, Hugo’s most treasured possession. Recognizing the drawings, Papa George demands to know where Hugo stole it from and refuses to get it back. He even goes so far as to pretend that he has burned the notebook. Isabella, the young girl who is Papa George’s charge, swears it has not been destroyed and vows to help Hugo get it back. Isabella and Hugo establish a sort of friendship although Hugo is secretive of his living circumstances and his past.
Isabella invites Hugo to the movies, where her friend Etienne, a one-eyed film aficionado works. Isabella is passionate about movies even though her guardian, Papa George, hates them and refuses to take her. Hugo agrees to go because he remembers his father describing a movie he once saw about a rocket that was flown into the moon. Etienne usually sneaks kids in for free, but when Isabella and Hugo arrive they learn Etienne has been fired. They sneak into the movie anyway, where they are later caught and thrown out. Upon returning to the train station, the pair has a spat when Hugo refuses to reveal his identity. He runs away and Isabella gives chase pell-mell. She is knocked over by the crowd. When Hugo helps her up, he notices her necklace, a heart-shaped skeleton key that exactly matches the key hole on his automaton. Isabella notices and hides the key and refuses to answer Hugo’s questions about it.
The next day at the store, the old man accuses Hugo of stealing the notebook from his house, but really, Isabella found it and returns it to Hugo. He repays her kindness by giving her a hug, during which he surreptitiously lifts her intriguing key necklace. Hugo races back to the Timekeeper’s apartment, eager to try out the key. Isabella, who realizes what has happened, follows Hugo to the apartment and accosts him there, where he is forced to explain himself. During their disagreement, Isabella enters and turns the key. Instantly, the automaton springs to life and starts sketching. At first, Hugo despairs because it is not writing anything, but a few moments later, it is revealed that the machine is drawing a picture, the same picture from the movie which Hugo’s father loved, the one with the moon with a rocket in his eye. Isabella and Hugo then fight over the drawing after the automaton signs the picture, Georges, Melies, which Isabella recognizes as Papa Georges real name. In their debate, the picture is torn in half, and Isabella makes a break for home to ask Mama Jeanne about it before Papa returns home from the store.
Hugo pursues her, but when he attempts to follow her inside her house, she slams his hand in the door, hurting Hugo badly. Aroused by the commotion, Mama Jean comes to Hugo’s aid, bandaging his arm. When she sees the picture, she is stunned and demands to know where they got it. Then she notices Isabella’s key, which it turns out Isabella actually stole from Mama Jeanee. Fed up with both little thieves, Mama Jeanne shuts them in a room to hide when Papa Georges returns home early.
As she closes the door, Hugo and Isabella notice her glance at the top of the armoire. They investigate and discover a secret compartment in the top of the armoire. When one of the chair’s legs snaps and buckles under Isabella’s weight, drawings and sketches similar to the one created by the automaton and signed by Papa, flutter to the ground. Alerted to their presence, Papa enters and then goes into a rage when he discovers the drawings; he is so incensed he starts ripping them up. Mama Jeanne attempts to comfort Papa Georges, to no avail, and Hugo is asked to spend the night on the couch.
Instead of sleeping, however, he rushes to the train station and breaks into the toy store, looking for answers, but he finds none. The next day, he tries the bookstore of Monsieur Labisse; although his inventory does not contain information about films, Labisse suggests that they visit the Film Academy library instead.
After a journey through the subways of Paris, Hugo arrives and is at first denied entrance to the library because of his poverty-stricken and raggedy appearance. Luckily, Etienne, who is now a student there, vouches for him and helps him research George Melies. Hugo is drawn to a painting of Prometheus on the wall, who was a thief, but also a creative genius. In the course of their research, Hugo learns all about early French film and discovers that Melies was a pioneer of the medium and was actual a famous producer of films. One of his films includes A Trip to the Moon, the one which the automaton drew a scene from. Curiously, the article says Melies is dead. Hugo comments that this is false, and that he knows for a fact Melies is alive. Etienne laughs at first, but when Hugo insists that the toy maker is in fact Georges, Etienne is flabbergasted. They make secret plans for Etienne and Rene Tabard to visit and meet Melies in the flesh. Hugo does all of this without even consulting Isabella.
The meeting gets off to an awkward start because Papa Georges is ill, bed-ridden, and Mama Jeanne, protective of her husband, does not appreciate these surprise guests dropping by. Tabard reveals that he has met Papa Georges once before, when he was young, and that chance meeting inspired him to choose a career in film. Mama Jeanne allows them to enter when she realizes they have a projector and Papa’s films in tow. Quietly, they watch the film, of which Mama Jeanne plays a starring role as an actress. In the process, Papa George is awoken. He drags the projector and film into his room and closes the door. Thinking Melies needs a private moment, they allow this until they hear crashing and banging. Alarmed and fearing that Melies is destroying the films, they enter only to discover that Papa Georges has busted up the armoire to take out all his old things. Papa Georges reveals his story at last, explaining that he was the son of shoemaker who dreamed of more. After viewing a Lumieres brothers production, Georges found his true calling in film. When the war broke out, Georges was ruined; he sold or destroyed his sets and films. When his young cameraman and his wife died, they took in their child, Isabella. This sense of loss, both of doing what he loved and losing the people he cared about have made Melies a ghost of his former self all these years. After explaining that he had donated the automaton to the museum, Hugo then explains how it came to be in his possession. Hugo races back to the train station to retrieve it. In passing, he overhears a conversation between Madame Emile and Monsieur Frick that reveals his uncle’s body has been discovered. Because of his damaged hand, Hugo has not been able to maintain the clocks, and now the station business owners feel a ghost has been keeping them running. At this moment, the two spy Hugo, the thief who has been stealing their milk and croissants. They give chase and alert the Station Master.
Realizing his time is running out, Hugo races to the apartment to retrieve the automaton. After a pell mell chase, Hugo is arrested. He breaks free once more and is almost run over by a train trying to escape. When he wakes up, he is the arms of Papa Georges, who is once again wearing his star-spangled magician’s cloak. Papa Georges vouches for Hugo and takes him home with Isabella, where he invites Hugo to live forever. Tabard makes sure that the Melies are compensated for all of Papa Georges film work.
The book ends by fast-forwarding six months to a gala reception at the French Film Academy that is meant to honor George Melies life work. Out of five hundred films, eighty have survived, and the audience is enraptured as Melies’ creations are once again brought to life on screen, including the most important one to Hugo, A Trip to the Moon. At the post reception, Hugo practices magic tricks and Papa Georges pronounces him his assistant and gives him the new moniker, Professor Alcofrisbas. In the final chapter, the point of view changes to first-person, and the narrator reveals that he is Professor Alcofrisbas, a man who was once the boy, Hugo Cabret. He then explains that he built a new, even more fantastic automaton, an automaton which actually drew and created the book the reader has just finished reading.
APA Reference:
Selznick, B. (2007). The invention of Hugo Cabret. New York, NY:
Scholastic Press.
Impressions:
It’s a rare book that can make a reader cry. This fact alone makes The Invention of Hugo Cabret exceptional in my book, but it has other characteristics to commend it as well. Not only are the pencil drawings beautiful, conveying movement, action, setting, and character fluidly—almost like a silent move, in fact—but the writing is just as gorgeous. Although pictures and text work together in a symbiotic relationship throughout the novel, the writing can stand alone on its own merits. First, Selznick deftly shows rather than tells in his writing, just as he does the illustrations. Small details are used to communicate a great deal of information. For example, when Selznick mentions Hugo’s “un-cashed paychecks,” we are aware that something is amiss and that the uncle must be missing. Furthermore, Selznick chooses words carefully to communicate meaning. Light becomes “illumination,” things “accumulate” rather than pile up, Hugo “dart[s]” rather than runs, and a bell “jangles” rather than rings, just to give a few concrete examples (Selznick, 2007, p.63, 76, 145, 227). Selznick also possesses a keen sense of pacing and ability to masterfully build suspense through foreshadowing. For example, Hugo’s repeated wariness of the Station Master cues the reader that Hugo will surely confront this figure one day (Selznick, 2007, p.80, 131). Another example is Papa Georges loathing of movies, which hints at his true identity (Selznick, 2007, p.191).
In addition to well-crafted plot devices, Selznick employs creative comparisons to help the story come alive in readers’ imaginations as well as the illustrated pages. For example, when Hugo journey’s to the Film Academy library, he rides “the vast subway system that snaked beneath the city like hidden rivers” (Selznick, p.321). Isabella’s appearance is described as being “like a mermaid rising from an ocean of paper” (p.147). Hugo and his father work on the automaton together, nurturing it like “an injured animal that they were nursing back to health” (p.147). These are just three examples of the image-rich quality of Selznick’s prose.
The language of many passages itself makes excellent use of sound devices. Alliteration adds musicality as seen in the description of Hugo’s love of the “wonderful whirring sound” of the projector (Selznick, 2007, p.202). When Hugo surveys the ruins of the building where his father perished, Selznick uses the repetition of the consonant “b” sound, writing, “He made his way blindly…He looked down…because the wind was bitter… and eventually Hugo found himself…in front of the ruins of the burned down museum. All that was left of the building was a jagged brick wall with nothing behind the windows but black sky” (Selznick, 2007, p127).
This passage also illustrates Selznick’s impeccable use of imagery to convey and establish mood. Another example can be seen in the description of the Melies’ apartment:
They soon arrived at a decrepit apartment building across
from the graveyard. The whole building seemed to lean slightly to the
side. Ivey had once covered the walls, but it had been torn away,
leaving long interlocking scars in the cracked paint. The old man
opened the chipped green door with a large key
(Selznick, 2007, p.94).
Not only does this passage communicate a somber mood, it also extends our understanding of character. Papa Georges’ surrounding are as haunted as he is.
Many images, such as the latter example, highlight symbolic motifs throughout the book including ghosts, which help to develop the story’s themes. By losing his purpose and an occupation that he loves, Papa Georges has become a bitter ghost of the entertainer he once was. Hugo feels that he hears his father’s ghostly voice telling him to fix the automaton (p.95). In fact, Hugo runs around, wraithlike himself, a ghost who keeps the clocks mysteriously running.
But the true impetus of this amazing book is the poignant themes it conveys, which offer insights into the human condition. After realizing that Papa Georges kept the mouse he fixed, Hugo observes,
“Maybe that’s why a broken machine always makes me a little
sad because it isn’t able to do what it was meant to do…Maybe it is the
same with people…If you lose your purpose, you are broken”
(Selznick, 2007, p.374).
Throughout the book Hugo is a boy in search of his purpose, while Papa Georges is a man who has lost his. Both characters allow readers to explore big questions about what gives life meaning and value. Selznick (2007) drives the point home a few pages later, when Hugo comments,
“I like to imagine the world as one big machine. You know, machines
never have any extra parts…So…I figure if the entire world is a big
machine, I have to be here for some reason. And that means you have
to be here for some reason, too” (p.378).
This book is wonderfully crafted in every sense of the word. After reading it, I was so excited, I immediately drove to my local library branch to get a copy of the movie, but I was sorely disappointed. The film felt anti-climactic to me. It simply didn’t have the emotional punch of the book, probably because I didn’t have to actively participate in it. I did enjoy the film’s softening of the Station Master’s character, who, in the film, struggles with his own machine and his own ghosts, all while longing to be loved. Normally, I am not a fan of changes to books on film, but I felt this one worked because it supported the overall themes.
All in all, this book is a stunning work of art. I give it an enthusiastic two-thumbs up. Go and buy this for your library today!
Professional Review:
Gr 4-9 -- With characteristic intelligence, exquisite images, and a breathtaking design, Selznick shatters conventions related to the art of bookmaking in this magical mystery set in 1930s Paris. He employs wordless sequential pictures and distinct pages of text to let the cinematic story unfold, and the artwork, rendered in pencil and bordered in black, contains elements of a flip book, a graphic novel, and film. It opens with a small square depicting a full moon centered on a black spread. As readers flip the pages, the image grows and the moon recedes. A boy on the run slips through a grate to take refuge inside the walls of a train station-home for this orphaned, apprentice clock keeper. As Hugo seeks to accomplish his mission, his life intersects with a cantankerous toyshop owner and a feisty girl who won't be ignored. Each character possesses secrets and something of great value to the other. With deft foreshadowing, sensitively wrought characters, and heart-pounding suspense, the author engineers the elements of his complex plot: speeding trains, clocks, footsteps, dreams, and movies-especially those by Georges Méliès, the French pioneer of science-fiction cinema. Movie stills are cleverly interspersed. Selznick's art ranges from evocative, shadowy spreads of Parisian streets to penetrating character close-ups. Leaving much to ponder about loss, time, family, and the creative impulse, the book closes with a waning moon, a diminishing square, and informative credits. This is a masterful narrative that readers can literally manipulate. ~By Wendy Lukehart, Washington DC Public Library
Lukehart, W. (2007). [Review of the book The invention of Hugo Cabret, by B. Selznick]. School Library Journal, 53(3), 218. Retrieved from EbscoHost Database. https://libproxy.library.unt.edu:9443/login? url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx? direct=true&db=a9h&AN=24325670&scope=site
Library Uses:
Due to extraordinary popularity of the book, especially since its film debut, the book has some neat resources. Using the Scholastic Flashlight Readers Activity portal, teachers and librarians could develop a variety of different lesson plans (see links below). The Flashlight Readers activity offers author interviews, research resources, and problem solving games and puzzles that relate to book. After utilizing the Scholastic activities, students could create their own silent films using Prezi, PowerPoint, or Window’s Moviemaker. The library could then host a student silent film festival with special viewings for community members, awards, and refreshments.
Related Links:
- Activity guide for teachers (includes activity overview, planning recommendations, and objectives)
- Explore Hugo Cabret (a Scholastic Flashlight Readers Activity)