The narrator instructs us to imagine the story as a film, having us picture the lights going down and the curtains drawing back, all to focus on a small boy named Hugo that has been secretly keeping the clocks running in a train station in France. Hugo is gifted with understanding the inner workings of machines, and in an effort to feel closer to his father has set out to finish the work they started together - building a mysterious automaton.
Hugo begrudgingly can't seem to get rid of a nosy little girl named Isabelle, either, who just might have the connections to solve all of the mysteries that keep popping up. Beautifully woven within Hugo's story is a much larger narrative of the history of film itself, showing us how thrilling it must have been to see this dream world of film for the first time.
I would give the text itself maybe 3 or 4 stars. It's simple and moves the plot along just as fast as it needs to. But the illustrations that act like perfectly placed camera shots (whole pages dedicated to the close up of a boot tiptoeing away, or the nervous glance of an eye as Hugo checks around the corner to see if he is being followed) skyrocket this book to a 5. In one of the chapters, Hugo is researching film in a library, and the narration switches from third person to pure excerpts and pictures from the text book he was reading - I felt like I was researching right along with him. It was just plain fun, and I'll admit toward the end when everything is coming together I might have gotten a chill or two. It just fills you with wonder and you can't wait to see the next page and the next page and the next page. Here are a few of my favorites:
