Hugo's Here!!

I'm so very excited. Over the summer I stumbled upon a review for The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Our library did not carry it so I requested it through the inter-library loan service.

It arrived today! I had to rush to the library this evening. I arrived 15 minutes before they closed. Noone looked very happy to see me. I picked up a few interesting books pertaining to our school work this week in record time. I also picked up The World Without Us by Alan Weisman for my mom. After reading the jacket, she'll have to wait until I finish it before she can read it. But I digress...






Pardon the glare. Photoshop is not yet part of my repertoire. Doesn't it look nice? The story is set in Paris, 1931. A young lad is living secretly in a train station and he gets caught up in a 'intricate, tender and spellbinding mystery'.

























The thing that drew me in is the author's use of the images to further the story. There are over 500 pages, yet about half are illustrations. For example, chapter one is 61 pages long. Only about 5 pages of text, though. I quite like the artwork. From a quick sneak peek (I'm not supposed to read it until the kids and I start it together) much of it is set up like an artistic storyboard, telling the story one page at a time.

I expect we'll get through this pretty quickly as the kids are anxious to start our read-alouds again. I've been terribly negligent in that area of late. Purposely negligent, though. And only for a week. The week before last, we finished our summer read: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.