Book review: INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET

Author: Bryan Selznick

Year: 2011.

533 pages

Genre: children's literature, 1930's

Publisher: Profil Zagreb

Translation: Miloš Đurđević

Is this a magic box??? If you judge book by it's cover, it looks like one. But - no, it's a real book!!! When you take a little sneak peak inside, you will stumble upon to the text mish -mashed with many illustrations which will bring you into the story about...

...Hugo Cabret, a young boy who once found mysterious drawing which will change his life forever. It's situated in 1931., under Parisian roofs. Twelve years old Hugo Cabret is an orphan, thief and full of secrets.

But here you won't meet only a little watchmaker, you will meet one untypical girl, myserious toy seller, key which belongs to ~you-don't-know-what~ and mechanic man who keeps the story from past.

From the pen of Brian Selznick comes this story which was so enchanting to movie makers. Which resulted with Martin Scorcese was inspired to put it on the big screens back in 2011.

The story is about a little boy named Hugo Cabret. He lives in small apartment in small apartment in one Parisian railway station, which used to belong to his uncle. His uncle was watchmaker whose job was to keep all the clocks on the railways station on time. One day uncle disappears, and Hugo is left to live on his own. Small thefts and keeping an eye on clocks and maintaining them are the only things which he had left to keep the roof over his head.

One day, an old toy store keeper takes away from him one notebook which was so important for him. As this notebook was very important to him, but he can't get it back from an old man, he starts to focus on small mechanic toy/machine called automaton. It used to belong to his father, and almost vanished away in fire. If he will repair automaton, Hugo will receive an important message written by him. But he can't do it without that notebook. And how to make an old man to bring him the notebook back? Will mysterious girl and weird cinema worker help him to get it back? And what is so important drawn inside of it?

This book is book for children as a target audience, but also an audience of all ages can read it. And is very untypical. 533 pages, 284 are illustrated by Selznick himself (except few others borrowed and bunch of vintage photographies). Illustrations are part of narration and they tell some parts of the story. I dare to say that they reminds a lot on comics. Drawings are full of highly contrasted contouring and structuring lines, which gives some dramatic vibe to the story.

Story itself is not entirely about a young orphan who is passing trough the hard life situations. The main story behind it is story about a beginning of cinematography in general but mostly French. It is inspired by life and work of George Melies and an influence he had on cinematography of that time and also it's later development.

Illustrations contain a lot of artistic elements and are in very stylish compound with text. The only thing I feel missing is that they are more connected to the plot of the story than the character's emotions. So the reader doesn't get an insight of an emotional aspect of them and can easily perceive them as not completely portrayed, without any depth. Some segments of the book are shown in black/white outlook. Since it's children's literature, it was to be expected.

The whole concept of the book and it's very stylish form has really won me. As a big fan of comics, I found illustrations which are holding the narration very nicely composed.

What did not enchant me was the simplicity in some major twists in the plot, which would be even a little bit more tense and unpredictable. But, I'm repeating myself again: it's children's literature after all, so it obviously has to be that way, to keep children's concentration without any unnecessary distractions and digressions.

For a child's story, I feel it lacks a bit of educational character. For instance - Hugo doesn't get fully punished for some bad things he did. As a reader, you are not able to learn much about cinematography, or at lest it's beginnings. Cinematography is just mentioned, without anything to impress children and make them more interested in it. The life in Paris is located and situated mostly around the railway station, there is not much mentioning of some famous Parisian landmarks. But it's not actually the bad thing because the less glamorous side of life in Paris during the jazz age comes to spotlight.

MY RATING: 7