Author of the Day: Brian Selznick

For those of you who don't know, Brian Selznick wrote The Invention of Hugo Cabret and Wonderstruck. He writes books that I don't usually read because most of his books have about 400 pages of illustrations and maybe 50 of words. But he pulls off the illustrations nicely and comes up with stories that are much different than the fantasy and dystopian that I usually read.
Below is a short thing about The Invention of Hugo Cabret, which will tell you enough about the author which is the purpose of this segment, but I also did a review of his other book, Wonderstruck, here: http://bookahooligans.blogspot.com/2014/05/a-book-that-i-feel-kind-of-conflicted.html

The Invention of Hugo Cabret

This book is about a boy named Hugo who lives in this room at the train station and works the clocks there. He has no family, and everybody thinks that his uncle is still working the clocks. Hugo is a bit of a thief, and he gets caught one day and is forced to give the guy he stole from his notebook. His notebook has all of these interesting drawings that he wants to keep somewhat secret, and that's where the story really begins.

I first read this book a few years ago because my brother had a copy of it lying around the house. I picked it up and I liked it. I didn't get enough out of the pictures the first time I read it and I would probably better understand now. However, I still enjoyed it. Being very young and not having any knowledge of art, I still really liked the details in the drawings and the fact that the book also had really neat photographs. This book is a feast for the eyes. I didn't think that the writing was spectacular, though. There just wasn't much style. I feel like Brian Selznick is more of a story teller and an illustrator than an author. My reason for saying this is that he can tell a story with pictures and photographs very well. Writing is just kind of what he does when he can't explain something with illustrations. There just isn't much style to the writing. Metaphors and interesting phrases are rare in this book. But the plot, while sometimes predictable, was interesting. During this book, there are times when you think "Hey . . . maybe that guy is not who he seems!"
but it's fulfilling when you find out what's actually going on because the author usually reveals some sort of secret with a picture. Overall, I liked this book and fell in love with the illustrations. I recommend you read it.