The Invention of Hugo Cabret 
by Brian Selznick

Assembled by writer and illustrator Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret is a work of historical fiction that tells the larger than life story of a boy and his serendipitous encounter with a former filmmaker, a very famous one at that, in 1930s France. The boy is Hugo Cabret, a 12-year-old orphan living in a small, barely habitable room within the walls of a train station in Paris. The filmmaker is Georges Méliès, without doubt one of the most important persons in film history.

Left to fend for himself following the mysterious disappearance of his uncle, who stood in as his guardian after his father’s death, Hugo is driven not only to take over his uncle’s job as station clock keeper but also to steal food from nearby shops lest he die of hunger. He is also given to stealing toys from a toy store in the station and continually risking being reprimanded by its cantankerous owner in hopes of using the various mechanical toy parts to fix his most prized possession, a defective automaton that used to be under the care of his father, a watchmaker who perished in a fire. Hugo Cabret and Georges Méliès’ paths cross soon after the former successfully repairs the automaton, which sits facing a small desk, its hand poised to write on the piece of paper in front of it. The secret of the automaton, revealed the moment it is fixed, turns out to be so surprising and out of this world that the lives of boy and filmmaker are changed forever. 

“Surprising and out of this world” was also what The Invention of Hugo Cabret turned out to be. I found out about the book when news of a live-action 3D film adaptation, to be directed by none other than Martin Scorsese, emerged a couple of months ago. Thinking that it must be an extraordinarily good children’s book for it to pique the interest of Scorsese, who is a filmmaking legend himself and whose body of work is yet to include an honest-to-goodness kid-friendly film, I then set out to secure a copy. What I had in my hands several days later was a book so big and strange that it could only pack an equally big and strange wallop—which, thankfully, it did, within the few hours that I spent reading it and turning its pages and even long after I’d finished it. 

What you must know about The Invention Hugo Cabret is this: the book consists mainly of Selznick’s meticulously detailed pencil illustrations and stills from among the very first films ever made (including the legendary The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat and the iconic A Trip to the Moon, inarguably the most popular among Méliès’ works), interspersed with expository paragraphs written also by Selznick. It is a thick combination of prose and pictures, carefully calibrated so as to play out, as one critic succinctly stated, “like a silent film on paper.” The book’s unusual format, though, is not a mere gimmick, as the story it contains, apart from having a protagonist reminiscent of Antoine Doinel in François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, pivots both on a character based on a famous turn-of-the-century filmmaker, no less than someone who was instrumental in the development of cinematic special effects, and on the nature and power of filmmaking itself. It’s no wonder, then, that Scorsese got attracted to it. 

Also, the book, a little self-referentially, underscores the importance of books and of writing. Upon seeing the automaton for the first time, Hugo asks, “What’s that?” “It’s a windup figure, like a music box or a toy, except it’s infinitely more complicated,” says his father, “I’ve seen a few before, a singing bird in a cage and a mechanical acrobat on a trapeze. But this one is far more complex and interesting than those.” “What do you mean?” says Hugo. “This one can write.” Hoping to find a secret, life-saving message from his recently deceased father, Hugo, now an orphan—“a literary category denoting staunchness and pathos,” according to Patricia Craig—has taken it to himself to fix the mechanical man with the help of a notebook that his father left him and the books that the toy store owner’s goddaughter and Hugo’s newfound friend, Isabelle, has read. As mentioned previously, what the automaton is programmed to write turns out to be no mere scribbling, as it sets off, like clockwork, a series of important events in the lives of Hugo Cabret and one Georges Méliès, after which nothing is ever the same. 

Another thing you must know about the book is this: The Invention of Hugo Cabret is a curious device. It is a rectangular parallelepiped eight inches long, six inches wide and two inches high. On its top face is the semblance of a keyhole, not unlike what one would usually find on a treasure chest, for it could very well be a treasure chest. Containing, as the book itself declares towards its end, “one hundred fifty eight different pictures” and “twenty-six thousand one hundred and fifty-nine words,” The Invention of Hugo Cabret is a two-and-a-half-pound chest holding a wealth of wonders and a myriad of unexpected pleasures. It is a box of tricks designed to inspire awe in any person who is fortunate enough to behold its contents. Most importantly, it is one of the most amazing books ever invented.