Brian Selznick: The Invention Of Hugo Cabret

Not quite a comic and not quite a children's book, Brian Selznick's The Invention Of Hugo Cabret aims to be a movie on paper; and though writer/illustrator Brian Selznick never quite hits his target, he achieves some startling effects along the way. Selznick divides the book between roughly 250 pages of text and more than 250 full-page illustrations—the latter of which read like storyboards, moving through spaces as though mapping them out for a cameraman. Together, the two haves of The Invention Of Hugo Cabret tell the story of an orphaned pre-teen named Hugo in early '30s Paris, as he tries to repair an automaton that he and his father rescued from a museum fire shortly before his father's death. Hugo is convinced that the clockwork robot contains a message left behind by his dad, but in order to finish the fix-up, Hugo has to steal tools and gears from a grumpy old toy store proprietor in the train station where the boy hides out.