The Invention of Hugo Cabret

I took Blythe to the library last week for story time.  She is in big story time now, so I have 25 minutes to be by myself during which I usually find new books, check them out, and then read.  I forgot my book, but as I walked past the Caldecott section, The Invention of Hugo Cabret caught my eye, mostly because of its size--it is 500+ pages.  How could a Caldecott book be so long?  It was also released as a movie recently and I thought the movie looked good, so I checked it out and began reading.  

I finished it the same day.  The 500+ pages are deceiving because many of them contain pictures with no text.  You sometimes turn eight or ten pages at a time without reading anything.  I thought it was a wonderfully fanciful way to move the story along without having to explain through the text what is happening.  Brian Selznick, the author, said, "the images in my new book don't just illustrate the story; they help tell it."  

Hugo's story is very engaging.  Set in Paris in the 1930s, Hugo lives in a train station and is responsible for the care of the 27 clocks throughout the building.  He is trying to rebuild an automaton and steals small toys to get the parts he needs.  He is eventually caught, makes a friend or two, and through the automaton, makes an unusual and historic discovery.

I really liked this book.  I liked it so much I began reading it to Brandt on Friday before bed.  We read for nearly 40 minutes and well past Brandt's bedtime.  Saturday night we did the same, and Sunday night as well.  Brandt is totally into the story, wants to know what happens next, and has lots of questions about how things will unfold.  I suppose it helps that the main character is a boy, the boy has a mechanical man, and he lives in a train station.  I love reading it out loud to him, and watching him study the pictures as they move us along through the story.  

This is definitely a book I would recommend, especially for those with boy children of almost any age.  I know the movie is now available on DVD because I have seen it at Redbox, and so we will watch it after we have finished reading.  There is enough detail in the written story, however, to capture the imagination.

The Hundred-Foot Journey

I got this book, The Hundred-Foot Journey by Richard C. Morais, for Christmas.  Kent asked his sister Brenda for a novel suggestion (not as in "new" but as in "fiction") and this is what she recommended.  I have been reading various other things since Christmas, but I picked it up at the beginning of the week and finished it this morning as I rode my bike.

This is a great book.  It is the story of an Indian boy, Hassan Haji, whose family is in the restaurant business in Mumbai.  A tragedy at home pushes Hassan's family out of the Indian, across Europe, until they finally settle in a remote village in France in a house across the street from a famous restaurant run by a formidable woman chef.  Quoting from the author's web site, "After a series of hilarious cultural mishaps, the grand French chef discovers, much to her horror, that the young boy cooking in the cheap Indian restaurant across the way is a chef with natural talents far superior to her own."  She eventually takes him on as a pupil, and so begins his journey to culinary greatness.  

The descriptions of food throughout the book are yummy.  It made me hungry for Indian food, which I made on Monday, just to satisfy my cravings, hungry for French food, hungry for food.  Morais does a fine job evoking a sense of place, capturing the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of a place.  The characters are believable and likable and I found myself rooting for Hassan, the protagonist.  I just liked this book and would highly recommend it.  

But don't read it when you're hungry.