by Brian Selznick
A young boy lives alone in a secret room in a French railway station. He creeps around oiling and maintaining the many clocks, just as his uncle taught him to do. However, his passion is the gradual repair of a wonderful automaton or mechanical robot. He hopes when it finally works that it will write a message from his father. Intrigued already? There is no magic or fantasy in this chunky book, but it is full of fantastical ideas and the reader becomes very involved in the lives of a family that this boy meets, a family with its own secrets.
The story progresses in two ways. Some of it is told in a clear narrative form, but many pages consist entirely of drawings. It is neither an illustrated novel nor a graphical novel, rather moves in and out of the different genres. The illustrations are wonderful!
While we stay mostly engaged with the story of Hugo and his search for a message from his father, the author weaves in the story of Georges Méliès, a ground breaking French filmmaker. This is a very different reading experience, and would suite middle school and up. While there is a positive ending, Hugo experiences many disappointments, challenges and betrayals along the way.
by Natasha Solomons
Mr Rosenblum and his wife Sadie come to England as refugees just before the outbreak of World War II. They are German Jews, and English culture and customs are at first bewildering. Each reacts in a different way. Sadie strives to remember the smells, sights and emotions of her childhood and the wider family left behind. Mr Rosenblum starts a list of all the things he must learn (and do) in order to become truly English. Gradually his list is crossed off, but each step seems to remove him further and further from his wife, without changing the suspicion with which he is treated in war time England.
Eventually he decides to move to a traditional English village to pursue the last and most fantastical item on his list. There in the village he finds a very unusual English friend, but is also betrayed the very people he thought would help him. In the mean time his wife has seemingly started to loose her grip on reality... and you will have to read the book to find out more!
I was told originally that this was a “charming” story... but it is much more than that. It is certainly positive in its overall message, but tells a powerful and dramatic story, and has complex layers of meaning with at least a touch of Magic Realism. I read it in a sitting and I’ll be reading it again soon. There is nothing in the book to stop a younger student from attempting it, but the reflective nature of sections (such as Sadie’s thoughts about memory) and the complexity of the sub-texts would suggest older readers would find it more rewarding.
