The Invention of Hugo Cabret Study Guide

Brian Selznick is one of three children. He comes from a Jewish family that is related to David O. Selznick, a famous Hollywood producer responsible for classics such as Rebecca, Gone With the Wind, and The Third Man. After graduating high school, Brian Selznick went to the Rhode Island School of Design, a small private college. After college, Selznick worked at Eeyore’s, a famous children’s bookstore in Manhattan, while working on his 1991 debut, The Houdini Box. Selznick followed The Houdini Box with The Robot King in 1995 and Boy of a Thousand Faces in 2000. Selznick acted as his own illustrator for all of these books and was also doing illustrations for other books on the side. Then, in 2007, Selznick published his most beloved story, The Invention of Hugo Cabret. It was critically acclaimed upon its release and won a number of awards, including the Caldecott Medal, making it the first novel to ever do so, since the Medal is typically awarded to picture books. In 2011, Selznick published a sequel to Hugo, called Wonderstruck. Around the same time, director Martin Scorsese adapted Hugo for the big screen. Like its source material, the movie version of Hugo was critically acclaimed. It received 11 Academy Award nominations and brought home five. After Wonderstruck, Selznick released four more novels, the most recent of which is Big Tree (2023). Selznick still actively writes and illustrates and remains critically acclaimed in both fields.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret takes place in the 1930s, though many of its important historical references date back to the late 1890s as well as the 1900s and 1910s. At its heart, Hugo is a story about the invention of film, for which Georges Méliès is partially responsible. In the novel, Hugo goes to a library and reads about the Lumière brothers and their film The Arrival of a Train. In reality, The Arrival of a Train was not screened at the Lumière brothers’ first screening, though that is a popular myth which still endures. However, The Arrival of a Train and the Lumières were immensely important for the development of cinema in France, just as Thomas Edison was in America. Most of the Lumières’ early films were only a minute long and did not contain any real narrative. However, other people began breaking into the film industry as well, such as Georges Méliès. Méliès made over 1500 films between 1896 and 1912, many of which were short, but some of which were relatively long and complex for their time. Unlike the early Lumière films, Méliès’ movies were often narrative driven and implanted complex special effects. Méliès became one of the faces of cinema in France for some time, though, like in Hugo, he faded away into obscurity in the latter part of his life. Luckily, scholars and members of the film industry got together and restored Méliès’ reputation in his lifetime, though the way this happened is completely unlike what occurs in Selznick’s story. Today, Méliès remains one of the most important figures in the history of cinema and his film A Trip to the Moon remains one of the best-known and most influential short films of all time.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret is a unique work with a wide array of influences. It is a work of children’s literature, which integrates pictures alongside of text. It takes influence from a number of books meant for younger age ranges, such as Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are and Remy Charlip’s Fortunately. These and other children’s books use imagery to forward their narratives as much (or more) than they do language. The same can be said of Hugo, though Hugo is unique because it is a chapter book, which is made for a slightly older audience. Hugo is also influenced by French authors such as Jules Verne and French filmmakers such as François Truffaut. Both Verne and Truffaut specialized in telling children’s adventure stories. Verne’s stories were rather fantastical and included works such as Journey to the Center of the Earth and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Meanwhile, Truffaut’s films—such as The 400 Blows—took a realistic look at a child from a troubled home. Selznick wove all of these influences into Hugo, which is both an adventure story and a tale about a child with a difficult family situation.