Mystical Read for Kids of All Ages (Book Review)

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The Invention of Hugo Cabret is a mystical tale skillfully weaved by Brian Selznick. Using both pictures and words, Selznick hurriedly throws the reader in for the ride of a lifetime. Though at times confusing, more times than not you cannot put it down. Your sole concern is to find out what comes about of Hugo and Isabelle, the mysterious toy shop owner, and the automaton.

Part One pulls you in immediately with a series of pictures starting at the moon and slowly working it's way onto the face of a young boy in a Parisian train station. I need to interupt myself just to say how impressed I was by the illustrations. They captured the true essence of the emotions of the characters and implanted you into the different Paris spots. Brilliantly done! Anyway, you quickly find out that Hugo, the boy, is secretly the time keeper of the clocks in the train station. He is, therefore, also a thief and essentially the ghost of the station. The story that unfolds is a mystery, a very slight romance between Hugo and Isabelle (the kid version of romance!), and a fairy tale. I found myself trying to find even just 20 minutes to sit and read because it was so good! It looks extremely intimidating, especially for young kids, because of the size of it. However, take just a minute to flip through it and you will see that probably half of it is the illustrations and most pages with text are not full pages with it. This unique style made the book go by very quickly. If I sat down for the said 20 minutes, I would get a solid hundred pages read!

Selznick did a wonderful job on this book. I could not put it down and did not want it to end. I will most definitely be checking out what else he has written!



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Hi everyone,
Yep, it's really me. Been MIA for awhile again. Really sorry about that :( Have had a lot going on, I guess. I could focus on medical issues, but maybe that deserves a post all on its' own. I hope to be slowly scooting back into blogging. Just know that I still think of all of you SO much. I miss you and love you terribly. Until next time (which will hopefully be SOON lol). Love you,
Hannah