The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick is a 533-page combination of black and white hand drawn illustrations and cleverly written chapters that produces enticing and adventuresome scenes. Once you pick up the book you will notice the size and intricate cover which gives away clues that this book is going to contain multiple layers and provide the readers with quite the journey. The author uses thicker pages to make it seem as if when you are reading this book, you are flipping through his sketch book and critiquing his illustrations. Drawing the scenes in black and white do a couple things for the book, for one it responds to the period of the 1930s and allows us to envision that we are back in time. The second benefit to drawing them in black and white is the fact that it keeps the illustrations pure and reiterates the feeling of flipping through a sketch book. Selznick creates suspense and arrival by switching off between illustrations and text. He will setup a scene with text and then take you through that scene with illustrations which is extremely helpful for not only children but also adults reading to help follow along with the story. The book’s persistence of constantly showing the next scene after describing it will engage the readers and keep them wanting more. This creates a faster pace and will keep the reader’s attention throughout the book and even allow younger, less experienced readers the ability to read along and finish this extensive novel.

The sequence of events in this novel have a roller coaster like path where the main character, Hugo Cabret, is dealing with several life changing events in a short period of time. Battling through ups and downs to find himself and continue his father’s legacy puts Hugo in some tough situations that he needs to rely on his quick thinking and innovative approaches to putting back together gizmos, gadgets, and clocks. He was the apprentice to is father and uncle who both repaired clocks. Hugo’s job is to check the clocks in the train station and make sure they are all synchronized. This is a constant foreshadowing throughout the book that he will need to repair the events that happen during his life as well and he ends up learning that he needs to allow people into his life in order to complete the synchronization of his own legacy.