Spell bound

Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen certainly has its charms (sorry :*) The Waverlys have always been an unusual family, with peculiar gifts and a peculiar garden. Though they have lived in Bascomb, North Carolina for generations, they are outsiders.

Claire Waverly has stayed at home, quietly running a successful catering business. Her recipes incorporate flowers, and have some strange properties. Their mother abandoned Claire and her sister Sydney to the care of their grandmother. Sydney ran off when she turned eighteen, and Grandmother has died, so Claire is alone in the old family home.

A new neighbor has moved in, and ignores Claire's protective borders. He is an attractive if abstracted artist, and quickly becomes fascinated with Claire. Then Sidney returns home with her young daughter, Bay. Sidney has run away from her abusive husband, but she won't tell Claire where she's been, or anything else. Both sisters need to confront the past and the future, and the Waverly magic. The romantic subplots are a bit forced. Cousin Evanelle Waverly and her gift for giving the exactly correct gift at the time it will be needed makes up for it. It's a sweet, quaint, comfortable if not quite magical read. This was another Advance Reading Copy--thank you Random House.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick held me spellbound completely. One of my customers recommended it to me, and I trusted her without even asking questions. It is wonderful.

I was rather surprised the book weighed in at 534 pages, or roughly 2.5 lbs. On the long side for juvenile fiction, if not quite Harry Potter (is the new book classified teen again?). On page 511, Hugo says he will create an automaton that can "produce one hundred and fifty-eight different pictures, and can write...an entire book, twenty-six thousand one hundred fifty-nine words. These words." I'm not sure if that is a precise inventory of The Invention of Hugo Cabret. It is mainly images--black and white--Hugo, clocks, clockworks, the station, the people he meets. It is cinematic in feel, which is quite fitting, though I don't want to give anything away... There are actual archival images interspersed with the fine, crosshatched, atmospheric closeups and pans.

The orphaned Hugo has been living with his uncle, who is the clock-keeper of a large Paris train station in the 1920s. However, the uncle has disappeared. Hugo has continued to tend the clocks, stealing food from the businesses in the station, since he doesn't know how to cash his uncle's paychecks, which continue to arrive. Hugo is fascinated by some mysterious drawings his father made in a notebook. The drawings show an elaborate machine, an automaton, like an early robot. Hugo believes if he can repair the broken automaton, it will communicate with his father. Hugo is caught stealing from a toyshop in the station. He makes friends with Isabelle, the goddaughter of the man who owns the toyshop, and they set out to solve the mystery of the notebook and the automaton. Its a wonderful escape to a Paris of magic and wonder.