The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick

I have in my hot little hands an ARC of The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, which will be released by Scholastic in the spring of 2007. This will be their blockbuster book next year, I have no doubt. The book is combination of text and images that are interwoven such that part of the story is told in prose, and then it switches to cinematic-style drawings which continue the story before switching back to prose. Back and forth. The illustrations do not merely enhance the story—they are essential to it.

Hugo Cabret is a boy who secretly lives within the walls of a Paris train station keeping the clocks of the station working in his alcoholic uncle’s stead. He soon becomes embroiled in a mystery involving the bitter old man who runs the station toy store, a bookish girl, and his most precious possession, a broken mechanical man—a magician’s automaton that, when working, will reveal a written message.

I was amazed when I saw the automaton described in the book. E and I had seen something just like it at the Forbidden City in Beijing, in the clock museum there! The automaton clock was a part of the imperial collection. It featured a mechanical man in British costume sitting at a desk with a Chinese Calligraphy brush in his hand. When a piece of paper was inserted into the holder on the desktop and its clockworks put into motion, the man’s arm began to move, writing a complete poem in Chinese calligraphy onto the paper. Most amazingly, the brush strokes were perfect, resulting in beautifully formed Chinese characters—better than I could do with a brush, certainly (click on the image to enlarge). And this, done by a completely mechanical machine!

This automaton was perhaps the most memorable thing we saw in the Forbidden City. While the imperial treasures were all impressive and the sheer magnitude of the palace was breathtaking, it was this mechanical man that we still continue to talk about and marvel over, trying to figure out how it was made.

I was surprised to learn, in the author’s note at the end of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, that the fictional automaton in the book was based on an entire collection of similar inventions belonging to French filmmaker George Méliès. Selznick also cites one that he was able to study at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I had no idea there were so many of these figures created, all designed to create fantastically impressive drawings and writings.

Roger Sutton, the editor of The Horn Book, wrote briefly on his blog about The Invention of Hugo Cabret last week. He shared a quote that he particularly liked:

[Isabel] walked to the rear door and took out a bobby pin from her pocket. Hugo watched as she fiddled with the pin inside the lock until it clicked and the door opened.

"How did you learn to do that?" asked Hugo.

"Books," answered Isabelle.

That’s exactly what I’m saying.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick

Tags: children's+books automatons forbidden+city Brian+Selznick