Greg's Reviews > The Invention of Hugo Cabret

There is something awesome feeling about getting through 400 pages of a book on an hour lunch break, and still have time to use the bathroom and punch in three minutes early. So what if the book has lots of illustrations and it's written for children, it's still a real sense of Herculean reading, even if it's not that impressive.

I liked this book a lot. I considered giving it five stars. I don't read children or young adult novels so I don't have much to compare it to. The book has much more depth though than This is not a Box, or Don't Give the Cat a Cupcake or even any of the books about that troublesome pigeon who wants to drive the bus and do other things birds aren't supposed to do. This book also is so much better than the first two Harry Potter books, which I have read and didn't care for very much. This book has the a great sense of wonder that adult books like Trip to the Stars has. It also has a feeling of the greatness and mystery of books and stories in general that reading Borges can induce, but this is for kids, which is cool because it's probably good for kids to learn that books are magical and fun at a young age. The pictures that make up about half the book are an interesting device. They do help move parts of the story along, like I think the chase scenes benefit from being done entirely by pictures, reading about a boy running away from someone wouldn't have had the same 'excitement' as in the pictures. I don't know much about kids but I think that the way the book opens with almost fifty pages of pictures gives a great feeling for the book which would be much more difficult to have described for kids in only words.

As I said I liked this a lot and the book made me happy that it existed in the world.