Caldecott Medal 2008 The Invention of Hugo Cabret illus. by Brian Selznick written by the illustrator (Scholastic) review

Caldecott Honor Books

• Henry's Freedom Box illus. by Kadir Nelson; written by Ellen Levine (Scholastic) review
• First the Egg written and illus. by Laura Vaccaro Seeger (Roaring Brook) review
•The Wall : Growing Up behind the Iron Curtain written and illus. by Peter Sis (Farrar) review
• Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity written and illus. by Mo Willems (Hyperion) review

How the Horn Book reviewed the winners

 Brian Selznick  The Invention of Hugo Cabret; illus. by the author
          Scholastic
          Reviewed 3/07
Here's a dilemma for the Newbery committee...and the Caldecott: what do you do with an illustrated novel in which neither text nor pictures can tell the story alone? Not to mention the drama to be found in the page turns themselves. A brief introduction sets the time (1931) and place (Paris) and invites readers to imagine they're at the movies. And with a turn of the page, they are, as, over a sequence of twenty-one double-page wordless spreads, a story begins. A picture of the moon gives way to an aerial shot of Paris; day breaks as the "camera" moves into a shot of a train station, where a boy makes his way to a secret passage from which, through a peephole, he watches an old man sitting at a stall selling toys. Finally, the text begins: "From his perch behind the clock, Hugo could see everything." The story that follows in breathtaking counterpoint is a lively one, involving the dogged Hugo, his tough little ally Isabelle, an automaton that can draw pictures, and a stage magician turned filmmaker, the real-life Georges Méliès, most famously the director of A Trip to the Moon (1902). There is a bounty of mystery and incident here, along with several excellent chase scenes expertly rendered in the atmospheric, dramatically crosshatched black-and-white (naturally) pencil drawings that make up at least a third of the book. (According to the final chapter, and putting a metafictional spin on things, there are 158 pictures and 26,159 words in the book.) The interplay between the illustrations (including several stills from Méliès’s frequently surreal films and others from the era) and text is complete genius, especially in the way Selznick moves from one to the other, depending on whether words or images are the better choice for the moment. And as in silent films, it's always just one or the other, wordless double-spread pictures or unillustrated text, both framed in the enticing black of the silent screen. While the bookmaking is spectacular, and the binding secure but generous enough to allow the pictures to flow easily across the gutter, The Invention of Hugo Cabret is foremost good storytelling, with a sincerity and verbal ease reminiscent of Andrew Clements (a frequent Selznick collaborator) and themes of secrets, dreams, and invention that play lightly but resonantly throughout. At one point, Hugo watches in awe as Isabelle blithely picks the lock on a door. "How did you learn to do that?" he asks. "Books," she answers. Exactly so. R.S.

Ellen Levine Henry's Freedom Box; illus. by Kadir Nelson
     Scholastic
     Reviewed 3/07
In a true story that is both heartbreaking and joyful, Levine recounts the history of Henry "Box" Brown, born into slavery. Henry works in a tobacco factory, marries another slave, and fathers three children; but then his family is sold, and Henry realizes he will never see them again. With nothing to lose, Henry persuades his friend James and a sympathetic white man to mail him in a wooden box to Philadelphia and freedom. Levine maintains a dignified, measured tone, telling her powerful story through direct, simple language. A note at the end explains the historical basis for the fictionalized story. Accompanying Levine's fine, controlled telling are pencil, watercolor, and oil paint illustrations by Kadir Nelson that resonate with beauty and sorrow. When Henry's mother holds him as a child on her lap, they gaze out at bright autumn leaves, and the tenderness is palpable, even as she calls to his attention the leaves that "are torn from the trees like slave children are torn from their families." There is no sugarcoating here, and Henry is not miraculously reunited with his wife and children; however, the conclusion, as Henry celebrates his new freedom, is moving and satisfying. S.D.L.

Laura Vaccaro Seeger  First the Egg; illus. by the author
          Porter/Roaring Brook
          Reviewed 11/07
Seeger, creator of outside-the-box concept books such as Lemons Are Not Red (rev. 1/05), here presents a companion volume about the order of things. The text is minimal: "First the EGG / then the CHICKEN / First the TADPOLE / then the FROG" and so on with seed and flower, caterpillar and butterfly. Seeger then proceeds to more abstract pairs — "First the WORD / then the STORY / First the PAINT / then the PICTURE" — making them concrete for the youngest viewers by incorporating objects mentioned in the preceding pages into both story and picture. The ending is circular — well, almost, because who really knows which came first, the chicken or the egg? Pages are color-saturated and as minimalist as the text; thick, practically palpable brush strokes on canvas backgrounds draw the hand to the page as well as the eye. As in Lemons Are Not Red, cleverly conceived and executed cutouts reinforce the book's tactile appeal even as they propel the page turns. The book's tidy square shape showcases the simple objects; its relatively small trim size is the perfect balance for the lushness of the art. The best picture books create a world in themselves, and this tour de force is one of them. M.V.P.

Peter Sis  The Wall: Growing Up behind the Iron Curtain; illus. by the author
           Farrar
           Reviewed 9/07
The personal meets the political in this absorbing autobiographical picture book from Czech emigre Sis. Born in 1949, just as Czechoslovakia fell under communist rule and Soviet domination, Sis evokes the childhood of a born artist ("as long as he could remember, he had loved to draw") in a country where restrictions on what an artist could do grew along with him, where a child's love for drawing shapes and people was channeled, at school, into drawing tanks and hammer-and-sickles. While the brief main text of each page describes Sis's own experiences ("Slowly he started to question. He painted what he wanted to — in secret"), small captions illuminate the thumbnail pictures of conditions in the country. Strategically accented with red stars and flags, these black ink drawings, sometimes four or six to a page, are almost entirely composed of short, stuttering horizontal pen strokes. The technique is all the more effective for the contrast it allows to Sis's — and Czechoslovakia's — expansive forays into freedom, like the full-color double-page spread depicting the Prague Spring of 1968, which blossoms with images of John Lennon, a Yellow Submarine, and a star-dappled winged horse at the end of a rainbow. The deployment of media choices and color throughout the book is both expert and telling: bold, stark black marker for an invading Soviet tank, dreamy blue crayon for the night the Beach Boys played Prague. It's a surprisingly comprehensive portrait of an era, an artist, and the persistence of the latter in the face of the former. R.S.

Mo Willems  Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity; illus. by the author
      Hyperion
      Reviewed 11/07
This second book starring Trixie, her parents, and her best stuffed-animal friend (Knuffle Bunny, rev. 9/04) touches on situations and emotions immediately familiar to small children and their grownup caregivers. Trixie (older now, and a whole lot more verbal than when we first met her) can't wait to share her "one-of-a-kind" Knuffle Bunny with her preschool friends. But when she spots classmate Sonja with a Knuffle Bunny look-alike (Sonja calls hers "Nuffle"), "the morning [does] not go well." The girls fight, and the bunnies are confiscated for the day. When it's time to go home, their teacher reunites each girl with her toy...or so it seems. An urgent middle-of-the-night phone call ("We have your bunny") and an emergency rabbit exchange restore order and provide Trixie with her first human best friend. Willems's page design and animation-inspired panel illustrations are just as visually dynamic as in the first book. As before, colorful cartoon-style characters are set against black-and-white photographs of an urban neighborhood. While the text winks above children's heads a couple of times, most young listeners will be so engaged in the drama that they'll care as little as Trixie does about such technicalities as "what '2:30 a.m.' means." Who needs sleep at a time like this? K.F.

2008 ALA awards