Loved this book, easiest 530 pager I've ever read. The reason is that it's (literally) half text, half illustrations. The pencil drawings, woven throughout, give the book, a Caldecott Medal winner, a silent-movie like feel. This is the story of Hugo in 1931 Paris, an orphan and time keeper who lives behind the walls of a busy train station forced to hide from the world in order to keep both his job and a place to live.
He is fiercly protecting the automatron (mechanical man) that his father brought home years earlier. The automatron sits at a table, hand wrapped around a pen and Hugo's challenge is to get him to work so he can find out what the man will write (or draw). Is it a message from his dead father? With the help of his friend Isabelle, he is able to solve the mystery of where his mechanical man came from and what his messages mean.
The writing is sparse but beautifully crafted: Says Hugo to Isabelle from atop the train station on a starry night: "Sometimes I come up here at night just to look at the city. I like to imagine that the world is one big machine. You know, machines never have any extra parts. They have the exact number and type of parts they need. So I figure if the entire world is a big machine, I have to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be here for some reason tool"
Real life history is the background for this story which I can't wait for my kids to read. I was riveted... and want them to have as much following Hugo's adventures as I did.
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