I enjoyed this book so much, even more than Wonderstruck which I loved. The illustrations are wonderful and the way the story is told in text and then for several pages in drawing is so unique. This book also has some vintage photography of the era which really helps set the scene.Hugo is an orphan with a talent for machinery, he lives in a railway station in Paris and tends to the clocks and steals food to get by. He has a secret that he focusses all his energy into trying to complete in his fa...

Twelve-year-old Hugo, orphan, clock keeper, and thief, has been keeping the clocks running in the walls of a busy Paris train station, where his survival depends on secrets and anonymity.But when his world suddenly interlocks with a mysterious toyseller and his goddaughter, an eccentric, bookish girl, Hugo's undercover life, and his most precious secret, are put in jeopardy.A cryptic drawing, a treasured notebook, a stolen key, a mechanical man, and a hidden message from Hugo's dead father form

[Book #39 for my grad school Children's Lit class]What a great reading experience!

No amount of words can truly explain how much this book means to me, so all I will say is...This book changed my life at a very young age, and I'm sure you'll love it just the same!

I read the entire book in a few hours this afternoon; despite being about 500 pages it only has about 26,000 words and much of the page space is taken up with interesting formatting as well as sketches that help fill in some scenes of action and emotion to move the plot forward. It's a very interesting and ingenious idea for a book, one I quite appreciated. I almost always focused on the words more than the pictures in storybooks as a child, and I suppose that remains the case here, though it wa...

I felt intimidated by the idea of reviewing Hugo Cabret, and wondered if anyone would help me. Luckily, the cast of Terry Gilliam's 1989 movie The Adventures of Baron Munchausen were delighted to come to my rescue. Here are some selected comments:The Right Ordinary Horatio JacksonI do not approve of this absurd confection, which even the most cursory glance will reveal to be utterly lacking in rationality. A small boy cannot hide in the walls of a station and tend its clocks; a clockwork automat...

"The story I am about to share with you takes place in 1931, under the roofs of Paris. Here you will meet a boy named Hugo Cabret, who once, long ago, discovered a mysterious drawing that changed his life forever." So begins the introduction of The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Shortly after the start of the story we learn that twelve-year-old Hugo has recently lost his father to a tragic fire.A horologist working for the city's museum, Hugo's father finds an old automaton in the museum's attic

There is something awesome feeling about getting through 400 pages of a book on an hour lunch break, and still have time to use the bathroom and punch in three minutes early. So what if the book has lots of illustrations and it's written for children, it's still a real sense of Herculean reading, even if it's not that impressive. I liked this book a lot. I considered giving it five stars. I don't read children or young adult novels so I don't have much to compare it to. The book has much more de...

Cozy and beautiful. Wish I had read this as a kid! Never too late to prepare for the Scorsese film though.

As I enter a cinematic state induced by Brian Selznick in his introduction, I find Hugo Cabret in a busy train station in Paris in 1931 and he’s the most mysterious boy I could ever hope to meet. As he moves among bustling crowds, black and white line drawings show me his furtive movements. He looks over his shoulder. Is he being followed? Does anyone see him? I see only his foot as he enters a metal grate in the wall, then only his eye behind the number 5 in a clock, overlooking a toy store. Se...

A truly WONDERFUL children's book. It's filled with an everyday wonder and magic which makes you wish it will never end. The illustrations are also so unique -- they act like a cinematic storyboard, and the narrative flits between this and text.

This massive hardcover might have been worth four stars as a traditional novel, but the whimsical and cinematic illustrations absolutely push this book to a four. I read it in an evening and wished that I could've had it when I was 10 -- I would've been in hog heaven. A great middle grade novel. ***wondering why all my reviews are five stars? Because I'm only reviewing my favorite books -- not every book I read. Consider a novel's presence on my Goodreads bookshelf as a hearty endorsement. I can...

Such a great book! My review can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ2cMh...

Simply the most imaginative, stunning book I have ever read. Brian Selznick is a talented artist. He uses his remarkable skill to create an incredibly beautiful and poignant story of an orphan boy, Hugo Cabret, who secretly roams the tunnels of the Paris train station, keeping the clocks in running order. He rescues an automata from a burnt down museum, in hope to restore it to its original form and to uncover its hidden message. He steals parts from a toy peddler, but eventually he’s caught and...

3.5I admit that for a while I thought this book might be one of those children's picture books whose ratings reflect the artwork and not the story. And yeah, the artwork is pretty nifty:But as the story began to unfold and became entwined with historical events, I gradually turned my attention from the drawings to Hugo Cabret and co. The book is set in Paris in the 1930s and Hugo is an orphan who only manages to survive each day by clinging to the hope that he will one day fix the automaton

DUE TO INTERNET ADVICE/ABUSE FROM A COMPLETE STRANGER, THIS REVIEW NOW CONFORMS TO GRAMMATICAL STANDARDS AND ALL THAT JAZZ, BUT IS STILL, AT THE END OF THE DAY, A BRIEF REVIEW OF A CHILDREN'S BOOK. OH, BUT I STILL WON'T CAPITALIZE LETTERS. EXCEPT HERE. BECAUSE HERE, I AM SHOUTING TO BE HEARD IN EVERY TROLL CAVE IN THE LAND. this book represents a series of firsts: the first book i have ever borrowed from work. and the first book i read for my summer class on "children's literature." and the firs...

If you've ever wondered where your dreams come from when you go to sleep at night, just look around. This is where they are made. I might be part of the minority who didn't really enjoy this book, and this breaks my heart because it looks truly gorgeous. The Invention of Hugo Cabret is a story told with dozens of stunning illustrations and few words. Unfortunately, I didn't find the story itself very interesting. This book contains one of my most hated tropes: the secret which has no reason to

Words cannot describe how much I loved this book! “The Invention of Hugo Cabret” is one of the first chapter books to win a Caldecott Medal and is cleverly written and illustrated by Brian Selznick and it is about how an orphaned boy named Hugo finds out the secrets contained in his most prized possession…a mechanical man from his dead father. “The Invention of Hugo Cabret” is clearly one of the most exciting and amazing books ever created for children!Brian Selznick has created a book that goes...

This novel is a unique attempt at combining the power of visual and textual storytelling. Page after page, we follow a string of drawings that speak for themselves, moving the story forwards while zooming in and out to change perspectives. Then we turn a page and find ourselves confronted with text, and we are continuing the story by reading instead of watching, - starting exactly where the last illustration left us. The difference between this novel and an illustrated children's book is that th...

Knowing I had to return this to the library tomorrow - I had a browse and noticed it is majority pictures and not a whole of lot text. So this evening I managed to read the entire thing out loud to my mother and sister 💖Boom! Now I can return it having read this masterpiece! "You know, machines never have any extra parts. They have the exact number and type of parts they need. So I believe that if the entire world is a big machine, I have to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be...