Hugo

Have you heard of this book? It was made into a movie and received a Caldecott Medal for the illustrations.

My friend lent this book to A1 to read. She teaches 4th grade. She had recommended it to him before, but he couldn't get it at the library. The reason was that it was always checked out. That was when she got the book and lent it to A1. He read it in 2 hours or less. He loved it.

She showed it to me before giving it to A1. The book is a whopping 525 pages, but get this, it is told in words and illustrations!

You read and flip the pages of illustrations to follow the story. It is pure genius! Why didn't I think of that!  Usually, the illustrations of a chapter book are about some part that you just read. The illustrations in this book are part of the storyline. If you skip the illustrations, you will miss part of the story. I have never seen a chapter book done in this fashion.

I ended up reading the book. Once I picked it up, I couldn't put it down. Well, I had to because I had to take care of some things for my children. But, it really kept me wanting to read more. In my opinion, the ending could have been a little better but, overall, it was a really intriguing book.

If you have a reluctant older reader (4th grade +), you might want to hand this book to them. It has captivating illustrations, a suspenseful story line, and they can say that they read a 500+ page book (even though a lot of those pages were illustrations). You might even want to read it before you hand it to them.   ; )