I heard a story about the Cannes film festival as I was driving into work today and it put me in mind of a great book: The Invention of Hugo Cabret, by Brian Selznick. It's set in the Paris Metro station and Hugo maintains all the station clocks even though he is just a boy. What really fascinates him though is creating his own machines and so he is in the habit of pilfering small mechanical toys from a stall in the station. This leads him to make friends and solve a mystery involving the early days of silent film.
The book is an amazing combination of pictures and words. Whole sections are told in black and white drawings, mostly wordless and interspersed are more traditional sections of text. The story is wonderful in and of itself but what really sets this book apart is the marriage of text and pictures to tell the story. A classic.
