Normally I don't pay much attention to children's book prizes as that sacred turf belongs to our sister School Library Journal, but I was surprised to learn that the winner of the 2008 Randolph Caldecott award for most distinguished picture book for children, announced this weekend at ALA Midwinter in Philadelphia, was Brian Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret, a 353-page illustrated novel. It's the first time the prize has gone to a novel, and as PW reports, booksellers and librarians have praised the Caldecott committee for "pushing the envelope."

As the book's illustrations reveal, courtesy of  the NYTimes PaperCuts book blog. this is no ordinary picture book aimed at the toddler set. Rather it is an original and artful mixture of narrative, black-and-white illustrations, movie stills, and archival photos, which offers a crossover appeal to adults, as Neal Wyatt notes in her July 2007 Reader's Shelf column, "Beyond the Funny Pages: Comics in Fiction." Neal praises the book's unusual organization—not quite graphic novel or flip book— as "an amazing and groundbreaking achievement, compelling us to read each illustration visually in order for the story to  progress." Equally enchanting, says Neal, is the the tale itself:. Hugo is a 12-year-old orphan who secretly  lives within the walls of a Paris train station. 


Unlike other literary prizes such as the National Book Awards and the National Book Critics Circle Awards, the Caldecott and the Newberry awards do generate sales. Prior to the announcement of the award, Hugo Cabret was a best seller, with some 200,000 copies sold, and Scholastic has an eighth printing on order. So place your orders now, and be sure to get some extra copies for your adult fiction collection. Put a display copy out by your checkout desk.