“Maybe we are all cabinets of wonders.”
Hugo Cabret was an orphan, clock keeper, and a thief, all in one. He had lost his parents when he was very young, and was forced to live with his uncle because he didn't want to go to an orphanage. Both his father and his uncle worked with clocks and machines, so Hugo grew up learning how to work with them and fixing them. His uncle worked at the Paris train station, and it was also where they lived. As Hugo grew older, his uncle had taught Hugo how to run the clocks in the station. His uncle was often drunk, and he would often disappear for days until one day, he stopped showing up. Hugo was scared that the station manager would find out he was alone and send him to an orphanage, so he made sure all the clocks were on time so that the station manager would never suspect a thing. He had no choice but to steal because he had no money to feed himself. With the exception of the toy booth, he had not stolen anything that he didn't need to survive. The Invention of Hugo Cabret is unlike any book out there; it's beyond a child's picture book, while being slightly easier to perceive than other fictional books containing only words. Because of the book's combination of imagery and literature, it makes the story easy to imagine inside the head. Although Hugo was only 12 years old, it was easy to tell that he was smarter, not to mention braver, than most 12 year old boys in Paris. His determination was also like no other. He struggled to keep living by himself because he wanted to fix the machine that his father tried to fix before he passed away. In my opinion, the ending was absolutely perfect; although it was slightly predictable, the way the author phrased the ending was beautiful.
Accelerated Reader Book Level: 5.1