The Invention of Hugo Cabret

A Letter from Brian Selznick

Dear readers,

When I used to be a kid, two of my favorite books were by an amazing man named Remy Charlip. Fortunately and Thirteen fascinated me in part because, in both books, the very act of turning the pages plays a pivotal role in telling the story. Each turn reveals something new in a way that builds on the image on the previous page. Now that I’m an illustrator myself, I’ve frequently thought about this dramatic storytelling device and all of its creative possibilities.

My new book, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, is a 550 page novel in words and pictures. But unlike most novels, the images in my new book don’t just illustrate the story; they help tell it. I’ve used the lessons I learned from Remy Charlip and other masters of the picture book to create something that is not a exactly a novel, not slightly a picture book, not actually a graphic novel, or a flip book or a movie, but a combination of all these things.

I began thinking about this book ten years ago after seeing one of the vital magical films of Georges Méliès, the father of science-fiction movies. But it wasn’t until I read a book called Edison’s Eve: The Quest for Mechanical Life by Gaby Woods that my story began to come into focus. I discovered that Méliès had a collection of mechanical, wind-up figures (called automata) that were donated to a museum, but which have been later destroyed and thrown away. Instantly, I imagined a boy discovering these broken, rusty machines in the garbage, stealing one and attempting to fix it. At that moment, Hugo Cabret was born.

A few years ago, I had the honor of meeting Remy Charlip, and I’m proud to say that we’ve change into friends. Last December he was asking me what I used to be working on, and as I used to be describing this book to him, I realized that Remy looks exactly like Georges Méliès. I excitedly asked him to pose as the character in my book, and fortunately, he said yes. So every time you see Méliès in The Invention of Hugo Cabret, the person you are actually looking at is my dear friend Remy Charlip, who continues to inspire everyone who has the great pleasure of knowing him or seeing his work.

Paris in the 1930’s, a thief, a broken machine, a atypical girl, a mean old man, and the secrets that tie them all together… Welcome to The Invention of Hugo Cabret.

Yours,

Brian Selznick

Brian Selznick on a “Deleted Scene” from The Invention of Hugo Cabret

This is a finished drawing that I had to cut from The Invention of Hugo Cabret. I used to be still rewriting the book when I had to begin the final art. There was originally a scene in the story where this character, Etienne, is working in a camera shop. On one of my research trips to Paris I spent an entire day visiting old camera shops and photographing cameras from the 1930’s and earlier, as well as the facades of the shops themselves. I researched original French camera posters and made sure that the counter and the shelves were accurate to the time period. I did all the drawings in the book at 1/4 scale, so they were very small and I frequently had to use a magnifying glass to help me see what I used to be drawing. After I finished this drawing I continued to rewrite, and for more than a few reasons I realized that I needed to move this scene from the camera shop to the French Film Academy, which meant that I had to cut this picture. I tried actually hard to find ANOTHER moment when I could have Etienne in a camera shop, but, as painful as it was, I knew the picture had to go. I’m glad to see it up on the Amazon website because differently no one would have ever seen all those tiny cameras I researched and drew so carefully!

–Brian Selznick

The Houdini Box

Walt Whitman: Words for America