"The Invention of Hugo Cabret" by Brian Selznick

It's not often you get jumpscared by a book, but there you are.

(Spoilers in the body of this post.)

The Invention of Hugo Cabret is about a boy who lives in a railway station in Paris, from which he scrounges (i.e. steals) gears and things to try to repair a clockwork automaton in the attic, using only some detailed drawings his now-deceased dad made to guide him. He's pretty sure it's supposed to write out a secret message or a treasure map or something, if he can only get it to work.

And after some time of fixing it and meeting people, he finally |gets it to work, and... it draws random squiggles|.

Except |it's not, really|.

It's |drawing a picture|, and when you turn the page after the characters realize it, you see a charcoal-esque representation of this MAJORLY SPOILERIFFIC image.

Which immediately alters your perceptions of what the book is about, if you know the context behind it. Like I did, having osmosed it from I know not where.

The pseudo jumpscare only really works because this book has an unusual format: much of the plot is carried by the lavish, sketch-like charcoal illustrations. In fact, probably the majority of the book's space is taken up by them. This is appropriate for a book whose subject matter |early filmmaking as a storytelling medium|, and it makes the story more impactful because you sort of have to work to get it out of the wordless pictures.

(It's less of "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" and more of "The Thing Hugo Cabret Found And Fixed Up," really. |Until you get to the very end and discover that in-universe, the entire book was written and drawn by an automaton Hugo Cabret built to write and draw the entire book. Presumably that's the titular invention.|)

This review is part of my first completed quest.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for some mild violence, chase scenes, and that jumpscare.

4 stars.

(Endnote: I'm not actually sure if it's pronounced "Cab-rhett" or "Cab-ray.")