Selznick, Brian. (2007). The Invention of Hugo Cabret. New York, New York: Scholastic Press.
Brief Annotation: Hugo's clockmaker father dies, leaving him to live with his alcoholic uncle, who tends to the clocks at a Paris train station. His uncle disappears, leaving orphan Hugo with a notebook from his father and a half-fixed automaton. Hugo loses his notebook when he is caught stealing from a toy store in the station, and his life becomes entangled with the toy store owner and his goddaughter, Isabelle. Hugo endangers his security in the train station to retrieve his notebook, and in the process discovers that the toy maker has his own secrets, secrets that intersect with Hugo's automaton in interesting ways.
Genre: Picture book novel
Grade Level: 2-6
Readers who will like this: Readers who like mystery stories, readers who like illustrations, readers interested in magic, readers who like movies and history
Response/Rating (1-4): 4. The combination of photos, drawings and text is fascinating, and the ending is surprising, and will make kids want to rethink the whole book.
One question you would ask before a read aloud: Do you have anything that is special to you that has a story behind it?
Reading Strategies Connection: I would use a literature map (Yopp & Yopp, p. 62) that the students would fill out during their reading. I would ask students to divide a piece of paper into eight categories, four with the main characters' names (Hugo, Isabelle, Mr. Melies, and the stationmaster), one with "important images," one with "clues," one with "events," and one with "questions and predictions." In the part of the paper with the characters' names, students should be asked to think not only about descriptions of characters and their actions, but also about the characters' motivations. The students could fill these out as they read, and then they will share their reflections with the larger group, and the teacher can write these reflections on a large board in front of the class. This would be a good activity with this book because it allows the students to make connections between the images and the words, and it helps them make sense of the complex motivations of the characters in this story. The students could do several sets of literature maps as the story progresses, so that they can map the changes in the plot and in the characters.
Reading Strategies Connection: I would use a literature map (Yopp & Yopp, p. 62) that the students would fill out during their reading. I would ask students to divide a piece of paper into eight categories, four with the main characters' names (Hugo, Isabelle, Mr. Melies, and the stationmaster), one with "important images," one with "clues," one with "events," and one with "questions and predictions." In the part of the paper with the characters' names, students should be asked to think not only about descriptions of characters and their actions, but also about the characters' motivations. The students could fill these out as they read, and then they will share their reflections with the larger group, and the teacher can write these reflections on a large board in front of the class. This would be a good activity with this book because it allows the students to make connections between the images and the words, and it helps them make sense of the complex motivations of the characters in this story. The students could do several sets of literature maps as the story progresses, so that they can map the changes in the plot and in the characters.
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