Wow

I just finished reading the children's book The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. Amazing...really. I saw the book at a Scholastic Book warehouse sale and it caught my attention. I had heard of it before...recently, but it took me a few minutes to figure out where. Ms. Morton, the teacher, made a comment about it on my blog about collections. She asked if I had read it. At the time my answer was no. Now...yes...and I loved it! The book is a fiction account of a portion of the life of Georges Melies, an early French magician and filmmaker. To read about his real life click here. Fascinating stuff.

The website devoted to the book, www.theinventionofhugocabret.com, has this to say about the book.

"This 526-page book is told in both words and pictures. The Invention of Hugo Cabret is not exactly a novel, and it’s not quite a picture book, and it’s not really a graphic novel, or a flip book, or a movie, but a combination of all these things. Each picture (there are nearly three hundred pages of pictures!) takes up an entire double page spread, and the story moves forward because you turn the pages to see the next moment unfold in front of you."

There is also a clickable link on that website where you can see an opening sequence of drawings from the book. Brian Selznick won a Caldecott Medal for his artwork in this book. Again...amazing. Fascinating. I loved it.