09/07/2014
The Magician
“The Invention of Hugo Cabret” by Brian Selznick. This is about a boy name Hugo lives in an old abandoned apartment in Paris. The building was where people used to live in who ran the train station, but his was the only one left. Hugo’s farther owned a clock shop as well worked part time at the museum working on them. He came home late one night from work and told Hugo he found something fascinating in the attic of the museum. His father told him it was an automaton. Hugo was very interested to see what this windup figure that can write but it didn’t work. After a few night his farther snuck him into the attic so he could see this. Hugo was so amazed by this that he wanted to fix it so he could see what it would write out. During the meantime while is farther was working he was always filling several notebooks with drawings of the automaton which were very detailed and it showed all the parts as he would carefully clean every single one. For Hugo’s birthday his farther gave him one of the notebooks as a present. That was the last time Hugo saw his farther. While he was working one night he got locked in the attic at the museum and for some reason a fire was started. From there Hugo’s Uncle Claude who was always drunk and had a flask in his hand came by the apartment to tell Hugo that he was coming with him. Uncle Claude told Hugo that he was going to show him how to take care of clocks and he was going to be his apprentice timekeeper. Hugo was able to go back to the museum after most of it was burned down but he had to get the automaton because it was the only thing left of his father. While Hugo was winding up one of clocks on the train station he notices an old man across the way who runs a toy booth. Hugo notices that the old man was distracted so he ran across so he could steal some pieces but Hugo got caught. The old man tells Hugo to pull everything out of his pockets which he ended up pulling out the notebook that his farther had given him. The old man’s attention was caught by one of the drawling’s which was the automaton. Hugo wouldn’t tell the old man who drew these so he told Hugo that he was going to keep his notebook and burn it. Hugo followed the old man back to his house to get the notebook but the door was slammed on his face. A girl popped her head out the window of the old man’s house to tell him to be quite. Her name was Isabelle who wore this necklace that was heart shaped which ends up being the key. The man started to draw in which was the picture his farther described as his favorite childhood movie, but then it signed a name of Georges Melies who is the old man also as Isabelle’s papa. The both of them found out that papa made movies by doing a little research. Six months later all of them are at the theater watching Papas movie. In the book The Invention of Hugo Cabret even though it was a Caldecott winner I wouldn’t agree with this being a picture book. I believe that in order for it be called a picture book it has to have a picture or pictures on every page. This book has 515 pages as well it is very thick and heavy to hold. A picture book tells a story even without words as well you should be able to look at the illustrations and have an idea of what it’s about. In this book yes there are pictures but not on every page and they are in black and white. Picture books help tell a story by showing action, expression, change of settings and develop the plot. The shape of this book is very large which is hard to handle by a child.