Book Review: The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick

Hey guys, it’s me, coming at you with the first of the Biannual Bibliothon book reviews I promised. This one is for The Invention of Hugo Cabret, which I probably don’t need to say since it’s in the title of this post. Anyway, let’s get into the review.

Star Rating

4/5 stars

Summary

This book is set in Paris in the 1930s, and we follow a little boy named Hugo Cabret, an orphaned kid who lives in the walls of a Parisian train station. He spends his days tending to the clocks in the station and stealing food and other things to survive. At the very beginning of the book, Hugo tries to steal a toy from a toy store in the station, but the store’s owner catches him. As punishment, the shopkeeper takes all the stuff he had in his pockets, including a very special notebook. The story goes from there.

The coolest part of this book, though, is that it’s told in a combination of pictures and words. The drawings are beautifully detailed, as you can see below.

The Review

As I mentioned above, I absolutely love the drawings in this book. They make the book a more engaging experience, because you can see the emotion on the characters’ faces, and you know exactly what the settings look like. Plus, they’re beautiful drawings, and there are a lot of them.

As for the story itself, I think it has a lot of good messages about friendship and redemption. My complaint with this book, though, is that the story seemed a little simple, and the characters were a little flat. There were definitely some good twists in there, and the way that it’s set up makes it easy to fly through the whole book in one day, and probably even one sitting. I just wasn’t really blown away by anything that happened in this book, so while it was definitely an enjoyable read that I would recommend, it’s not the best thing I’ve ever read.

That being said, I loved how there was a character who was a bookworm. That was super relatable for me. I also really liked learning a little bit more about clockmaking and film. There were a few tidbits of information in there that I didn’t know, and it was cool to learn more about.

***

Okay, there you have it! Let me know in the comments what you thought of this book, if you’ve read it, or if you want to pick it up, if you haven’t.

Thanks for reading, guys! I’ll see you soon.

-Ariel