The Invention of Hugo Cabret
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| Author | Brian Selznick |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Brian Selznick |
| Country | United States |
| Series | None |
| Genre | Historical Fiction |
| Published | January 30, 2007 (Scholastic Press) |
| Media type | hardback |
| Pages | 526 |
| Awards | Caldecott Medal (2008) |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 67383288 |
| LC Class | PZ7.S4654 Inv 2007 |
The Invention of Hugo Cabret is an American historical fiction book written and illustrated by Brian Selznick and published by Scholastic. The hardcover edition was released on January 30, 2007, and the paperback edition was released on June 2, 2008. With 284 pictures between the book's 533 pages, the book depends as much on its pictures as it does on the words. Selznick himself has described the book as "not exactly a novel, not quite a picture book, not really a graphic novel, or a flip book or a movie, but a combination of all these things". The book won the 2008 Caldecott Medal, the first novel to do so, as the Caldecott Medal is for picture books.
The book's primary inspiration is the true story of turn-of-the-century French pioneer filmmaker Georges Méliès, his surviving films, and his collection of mechanical, wind-up figures called Automata. Selznick decided to add an Automaton to the storyline after reading Edison's Eve by Gaby Wood, which tells the story of Edison's attempt to create a talking wind-up doll. Méliès owned a set of automata, which were sold to a museum but lay forgotten in an attic for decades. Eventually, when someone re-discovered them, they had been ruined by rainwater. At the end of his life, Méliès was destitute, even as his films were screening widely in the United States. He sold toys from a booth in a Paris railway station, which provides the setting of the story. Selznick drew Méliès's real door in the book, as well as real columns and other details from the Montparnasse railway station in Paris.
The book is written in a style of splitting the story into 2 parts, as well as an epilogue called 6 Months Later. There is no actual prologue called Before Story Events like there is in this summary, but rather a flashback from the main character.
In 1930s Paris, young Hugo Cabret and his father find a non-functioning automaton at the museum where the father works. They decide to fix it. One night, a fire at the museum kills Hugo's father. Hugo is orphaned.
Hugo's uncle takes him to the train station to live and teaches him how to fix the clocks. The uncle disappears, and Hugo keeps the clocks running. Hugo decides to leave the station and stumbles upon the burnt museum and the automaton. Hugo takes the automaton to the station to fix in hopes that it will write a message from his father.
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