The Invention of Hugo Cabret just became my favorite children's book after Charlotte's Web. I read it to Kevin over the course of a week, and we both loved it.

Hugo Cabret is a terrific mash-up of a children's book and a graphic novel. It's more than 500 pages long, but most of the pages have few or no words. Instead, they have beautiful, atmospheric, full-page pencil drawings.

The story is fabulous: A young orphaned boy lives inside the walls of a Paris train station during the 1930s, maintaining the mechanical clocks and secretly rebuilding an automaton to discover it's secrets. His life becomes intertwined with a young girl and mean shopkeeper, and he has some adventures and some close calls.

If you have children between ages 5-10, read this with them. If they're older, buy them a copy. It's that good.