Walking Away

What do you think Brian Selznick wants readers to come away with when they read this book?

New ideas, New Concepts, New Things

Did you learn anything new from reading this book?

Prometheus

The story of Prometheus is important in The Invention of Hugo Cabret. There’s a picture of Prometheus on pages 344–345. 
We learn that Prometheus was “finally set free” from his chains.  
What character or characters in this book does Prometheus resemble?

Hugo's Invention

This book is called The Invention of Hugo Cabret. What is Hugo’s “invention”? Could the word refer to more than one thing?

Friendship

Despite a rocky start Hugo & Isabelle become good friends. 

Discuss and write about the ways is which they are similar. How are they different?

Do you think that their similarities outweigh their differences? 

The Franklin Institute and Automatons

Chapters 4 and 5 are filled with a great deal of information about Hugo’s father and uncle. What do we learn about his father? His Uncle? The Automaton? Pick one or all three topics to blog about for this post.

Be sure to read the remainder of the post before posting a comment.

Brian Selzick did a great deal of research to write this wonderful book. One of his many stops was to a place that I visited many times as a child. Located in Philadelphia (my hometown), The Franklin Institute opened their doors to Brian as he wrote Hugo. Here he learned about automatons and their importance back in the in the early 1900s.


This link is the Franklin Institute's website. The top section contains a great deal of information about the early automotans. Half way down the page, you want to click the video on the right. This is when Brian visited and signed Hugo.
http://www.fi.edu/learn/sci-tech/automaton/automaton.php?cts=instrumentation -

Clocks

In Chapter 2, The Clocks, we learn a lot about Hugo and what he does everyday with them. In Chapter 3, the reader is provided with more information about the old man and some more about Hugo. The questions for this post are as follows:

1. How would you describe Hugo to someone that has never read the story?
2. Now, do the same thing for the old man, what is he like?

Post these thoughts onto the blog making sure to site evidence from the story to backup your reasons for saying what you say.

Happy reading,

Mr. Wittmer