December Book Recommendation
The Department of English recommends the following book for your reading enjoyment in December:
The Invention of Hugo Cabret, by Brian Selznick (2007)
This Caldecott-award-winning children’s book explores the powerful yet complex act of recovering/inventing apparent origins. Appropriately, thus, it consists largely of images (according to Lacanian psychology, the beginnings of self-awareness). These pictures are arranged so that they are simultaneously illustrations, flip book, and simulated movie, timed to coordinate with the written sections. Because the author’s family had such famous ties to the film industry, the subject is the life of one of its pioneers, George Méliès, but as model for Méliès, Selznick employed Remy Charlip, a pioneer of the kind of illustration Selznick is bringing to a more-advanced stage. Other comparable conflations are prominent in the book: for example, it is a self-reflexive extended metaphor about his “Invention” of the book and about the character Hugo Cabret’s inventing himself and about the invention of automatons (which thus occasion Selznick’s reflections on mechanical aspects of life and on the nature of art). It’s also a kid’s book concerning a little orphan thief learning to redeem himself.
You are invited to a public discussion of this intriguing book on Tuesday, December 15, at 6 p.m. at J&B Coffee, 26th Street and Boston Avenue. Dr. Jim Whitlark will serve as moderator.
If you can't join us but would like to offer your comments on the book, please visit http://wb.engl.ttu.edu/~books. After logging in, choose the discussion for December, and post your comment.
Please also note upcoming recommendations:
January: I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith
February: The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak
March: The Art of Power, by Thich Nhat Hanh