“This tale casts a new light on the picture book form…Neither words nor pictures alone tell this story” (Macleod, 2016) the two form an amazing experience which pleases artists and writers, the eyes and the imagination. ‘The Invention of Hugo Cabret’ by Brian Selznick is a multi-award winning book that doesn’t exactly fall under any particular genre. The coming of age, transformation novel follows the path of a young boy in search of his father. Although Hugo is alone more often than not, he is a resilient adolescent who develops strong relationships with those he meets. His amazing ability to repair broken machinery translates perfectly to the way he is also able to metaphorically mend people. At first this book seems like it is simply full of illustrations, but if the pictures are ‘read’ they start to tell a story.
If the reader were to skip the illustrations, they would become confused as to why the book might not make sense. Peter Carnavas is another author who uses both words and pictures in his children’s books to clearly tell the story. When he presents (reads) his books, he makes them realize that although he hasn’t clearly said where someone may be going, they have made the connection themselves by reading the pictures. This is one example that provides evidence to the fact that if there were no pictures,
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Would it become easier or harder to read, by being more simplistic or confusing to the reader? Say the pictures were removed; leaving it as a simple novel. How could we possibly understand some of the things that Hugo endures if we don’t see him running through the streets of Paris or climbing in behind a beautiful clock face? The Reader is able to move forward through the story as they turn each page to a new double spread image (of which there are nearly 300) where another event unfolds before their eyes. But it wasn’t easy to create such a