Winner of 2008 Caldecott

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick
I truly loved this book. It was great having the illustrations to help the text of the book flow, even though the book was 550 pages long, you didn't even realize it when you finished the book. The story talks about the life of Hugo Cabret after he lost his father in a museum fire. His father was a horologist and found a mechanical man in the attic of a museum that he was working at. After his father's death, Hugo's uncle took him under his wing and showed him how to take care of all of the clocks at the Paris train station. After his uncle disappeared, Hugo decided to keep maintaining the clocks so that people did not realize he was missing and would end up sending Hugo to an orphanage. In order to eat Hugo ended up stealing and was caught stealing a toy from the owner of the toy booth at the train station. In order to make up for this and to get back his notebook from mean old owner, Hugo performed chores around his booth. The notebook contained notes that his father had made in order to repair the mechanical man. The store owner, Papa Georges for some reason did not want to give up the notebook and enjoyed having Hugo around but did not let him know that. Then there was Isabella who was Papa Georges' goddaughter and befriended Hugo. All of their lives intertwined with the mechanical man as the glue that put them all together. By the end of the story we learn that Papa Georges was the inventor of the mechanical man and actually a very famous film producer that everyone thought to be dead. Hugo was taken in by Papa Georges and his wife and given a new name and a start to his new life, a magician. You will love this story and get so taken by it that you will not put it down once you start it!