Selznick's Caldecott Stunner

If you were surprised by this year’s Caldecott Medal winner, you weren’t alone. Even Brian Selznick was stunned that his novel, The Invention of Hugo Cabret (Scholastic), took the prize for the most distinguished American picture book for children. “I never thought I’d win,” the author told The Brooklyn Paper, a local New York newspaper.

The length of Selznick’s book was enough to give pause to Susannah Richards, a children’s literature consultant and assistant professor of reading and language arts at Eastern Connecticut State University. “I don’t think that the average person on the outside expects a 533-page book to win the Caldecott,” says Richards. “It’s the first time a novel has won this award.”

Hugo Cabret, about an orphaned boy living in a Paris train station in the 1930s and his friendship with a mysterious toymaker, uniquely advances its plot by offering page after page of detailed drawings, akin to the frames of a movie reel. It's not the kind of book that the average four- or five-year-old picks up, Richards explains. “Teachers have traditionally thought of the Caldecott for young readers, and this [choice] clearly is an opportunity for teachers and parents to rethink what makes a successful picture book.”

Kate McClelland, fresh from leading a seminar that touched upon the Caldecott’s eligibility requirements at the American Library Association’s midwinter meeting in Philadelphia last month, says many people thought a full-length novel would be ineligible for the award. “But when you examine it piece by piece, you find out that it’s a picture book and that it’s excellent in the ways that are outlined in the criteria,” says McClelland, a children’s librarian at the Perrot Public Library in Old Greenwich, CT. A picture book is defined as the collective unity of story lines, theme, or concept developed through the series of pictures of which the book is comprised, she adds.

McClelland points to the 1991 Caldecott winner Black and White (Houghton, 1990) by David Macaulay, which she selected as a Caldecott committee member. “The same questions could have been raised then, because it wasn’t what people at that time felt was a traditional picture book,” she says. “It had four stories which may or may not have been related to each other.”

While one children’s book author who requested anonymity says that Hugo Cabret “really pushed the definition of a ‘picture book,’” others were supportive.

“It explores the boundary between the picture book and the graphic novel and the conventional novel and film in a way that people of almost every age can respond to,” says Leonard Marcus, a historian of children’s literature.

Sue Giffard, a librarian at New York’s Ethical Culture School, says she jumped up and down when she heard Selznick’s book had won because it showed that the committee had “stepped out of a box.”

Pat Scales, an SLJ columnist and First Amendment expert, calls the choice “interesting” and “popular.” “Courageous” is the word Caroline Ward, coordinator of youth services at the Ferguson Library in Stamford, CT, and a former Newbery chair, uses. Joanna Rudge Long, who writes for the Horn Book, says, “It pushes the envelope but in a good way.”

Janice Del Negro, professor of children’s and young adult literature at Dominican University, says, “Instead of looking at a picture book as a standard 9-by-12-inch, 32-pager, the possibility exists for broadening the standard for what a picture book is. As far as telling a story through pictures, there’s no doubt of [Hugo Cabret] doing that.”