The Invention of Hugo Cabret (by Brian Selznick)

When Hugo's father, a clockmaker, is killed in a fire, he's taken in by his uncle. They live together in a hidden room inside the walls of the Paris train station, where it's his job to maintain the station clocks -- until one night he disappears. Now Hugo is alone, still living inside the station walls, stealing to survive, and still maintaining the clocks so no one will know his uncle is gone.

Hugo also works on an automaton, a mechanical man, that his father was trying to restore. He steals parts from a toyshop in the station. When he is caught, the mean store owner takes away his father's notebook and threatens him with arrest. But the old man's hidden past and Hugo's are intertwined, and the secret message hidden in the automaton's workings is only the beginning. Includes Acknowledgments, Credits, and References.

This book is like nothing you've ever seen before. When you or your child first pick it up, it looks like one of those fat fantasies that are so popular these days. When you open it, it even seems similar to a graphic novel. But lengthy sections of wordless illustrations (284 pages of drawings!) are interspersed with pages of more traditional novelistic prose. Neither text nor pictures can stand alone without the other.

Brian Selznick's brilliant hybrid is put in service of a complex and heartfelt story that involves a plucky orphan, the history of early cinema, the mechanics of clocks and other intricate machinery, and a little bit of magic. The whole is a work of great beauty and excitement, with breathless pacing ramped up even further by the wordless sections. Selznick has created an entirely new art form that succeeds as art, literature, and entertainment. Let's hope it's the first of a new genre.