Hello, Mr. Hulot

Gr 4–8—Monsieur Hulot, a comic descendent of Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp and forerunner of Rowan Atkinson's Mr. Bean, has charmed French film audiences for more than 60 years with his perpetual struggle with an increasingly modern and mechanized world. Created and portrayed by Jacques Tati, Monsieur Hulot is an iconic film character whose humor and personality derive more from his gait and mannerisms than from anything that he says. This is part of the reason that Merveille's Hello, Mr. Hulot works so well as a wordless picture book. Twenty short vignettes featuring Mr. Hulot are presented as sequential art, always beginning on the right page of a spread with two rows of panels and ending with a page turn that reveals a surprising, delightful, or surreal ending. Mr. Hulot is drawn with minimal facial expression, which is appropriate for an everyman character. His mostly blank expression allows readers to put themselves in his shoes as he inadvertently escalates a snowball fight, visits the zoo, or climbs a garbage bin to appreciate a songbird above the din of an urban street. The art's muted color scheme evokes the look of vintage photographs from the '50s or '60s, while the drawings themselves are often detailed scenes constructed from simple shapes and clean lines. In any given sequence, readers will find that they will want to spend time with each panel before turning the page to discover the story's resolution. Children with particularly active imaginations or sophisticated visual literacy will especially enjoy this book, but it would be a wonderful addition to any classroom or school library.—Joy Piedmont, LREI, New York City