For the Kid in Every Reader
By Kari Heil
I recently read The Invention of Hugo Cabret (2007) by Brian Selznick in order to preview it for my son, who is seven. After devouring the book in a couple of hours one evening, I decided that some of the content was a little bit too troubling for him to deal with right now. Maybe he’ll be ready for it next year, and I’ll read it again whenever he is. I’ll be eager to revisit the book because, though Hugo Cabret was intended for readers ages 9-12, it stands out as a really unique kids’ chapter book that is just intricate enough to engage an adult imagination. In short, it was super-fun to read! Yes, the characters and plot in Hugo Cabret are more straightforward, less developed, than those in great adult fiction, but they are not unsatisfying. What makes Hugo Cabret so special, however, is the way Selznick combines story elements and techniques – themes, words, and pictures – in a magical way to make Hugo Cabret really exciting reading for kids or adults.
Here’s how the magic works: In Hugo Cabret, Selznick integrates conventional narrative and dialogue with nearly 300 pages of full-spread, fully detailed pencil drawings that actually advance the plot, rather than simply illustrate what already has happened. Hugo Cabret is, quite literally, a page-turner, and the pictures tell the story almost as much as the words. Many quick sequences of drawings (a chase scene, for instance) and extreme close-ups lend a cinematic quality to sections of the book. If sections of the book seem like a movie, it is entirely appropriate, as the book’s central mystery revolves, in part, around movies made in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Hugo Cabret is an example of form and content coming together in a way that may make readers think a little bit about words, pictures, and how a book creates the illusion of a world.
Hugo Cabret is a boy who lives in a small hidden apartment in the walls of a large train station in Paris in the 1930s. His father, who died tragically in a fire, leaving Hugo an orphan, was a clock maker; Hugo’s uncle, with whom Hugo lived and apprenticed until recently, kept the many train station clocks running smoothly and on time. When Hugo’s uncle disappears one day, Hugo is left with the grown-up responsibility of time keeping for all the city’s travelers. Luckily, Hugo’s uncle had taught him just how to wind every clock in the place (from behind the walls, where no one can see him), as well as how to steal food and other necessary items from various vendors. Hugo chooses to keep his uncle’s disappearance a secret from the Station Inspector, since he fears that he will be sent to an orphanage if anyone finds out he is living alone in his uncle’s apartment, maintaining the clocks all by himself.
This unusual situation may seem like quite enough of an adventure for a 12-year-old boy – sneaking around in dark passageways built into the walls, eluding detection by adults, and occasionally lifting a couple of warm croissants or some fresh milk from the delivery carts early in the morning. But Hugo is not really a typical 12-year-old boy. Even as he dutifully winds the clocks each day, Hugo is preoccupied with a mystery that involves a series of drawings in a sketchbook his father gave him. The drawings depict an automaton his father found in the attic of the museum where he used to work. The automaton, his father had told him, can write and draw pictures when it is running properly.
Soon after his father’s death, Hugo gets his hands on the badly damaged automaton and begins to try to restore it to working order because he imagines he might receive a message from his father through it. Using his father’s detailed mechanical drawings as a guide, he learns how the complex machine works as he tinkers with it. When Hugo finally succeeds in fixing the automaton, what he sees leads him to explore more mysteries and more magical artistry (early movies), and finally, to find a new family.
Hugo Cabret won the Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished American picture book for children in 2008. It is a book full of weird and wonderful stuff, and reading it gave me a fresh sense of amazement at the worlds human minds can create—in machines, in movies, in pictures and words. Everyone should read this book because it’s easy and fun, and because it gets at the very heart of what makes reading so thrilling at any age: When we read a book – or look at art or even watch a movie, we are “wizards, mermaids, travelers, adventurers, and magicians . . . the true dreamers” (p. 506). The whole world is a great machine, and we wind it every time we use our brains to process words and pictures, to order them, to make a story; our imaginations keep the world running.
AND HERE’S A REALLY COOL SIDE NOTE: The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia owns a fully functional, restored automaton that was built around 1810 by a Swiss mechanician in England. The Maillardet Automaton actually can produce four meticulous drawings and three hand-written poems. Go to www.fi.edu/learn/sci-tech/automaton/automaton.php?cts=instrumentation to see a video of it doing its thing! This Franklin Institute link also can be reached through the official Hugo Cabret website: www.theinventionofhugocabret.com.
