HUGO CABRET As A Read Aloud

I have been trying to figure out how to read aloud THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET by Brian Selznick to my class. I had lots of options. I was going to use the projector at school each day but it would be hard to sign it out and get it to the room for 1/2 hour of read aloud each day. I was going to get the Audio CD that comes with a DVD. Then I found out that it had sound effects for the pictures. Sounded too much like animation to me. I want to be able to talk about what the picture tells us without the sounds that someone else put to the pictures. I thought about purchasing hundreds of transparencies and running a transparency of each page. Then, I remembered that at our local grocery store, we have a machine that counts our change and you can trade your coins in for......amazon gift certificates. I remembered we had a pretty full jar of change upstairs. So, I went to the grocery store, turned in my change and ordered 10 copies of HUGO CABRET. Kids can share in groups of 2 or 3. It was like they were free--okay, kind of anyway. (I could have been smart and organized and ordered 12 from the public library and waited, but I am not so organized and since we only have 5 weeks of school yet, I knew I had to act fast.) I love sharing things that are in the world of literacy chit-chat with kids. Since Al Roker just named THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET as his first book club book (kids 9-11), I thought we'd jump in and be part of the fun. So, we finish reading aloud HOW TO STEAL A DOG tomorrow or Friday (more on this later--it has been a great read!). We'll preview HUGO on Monday and we'll have about 4 weeks to read and discuss it. I am VERY excited. (And, I was smart enough to get the books delivered directly to school rather than carry 10 copies of the giant book from my house to school.) So, I'll keep you posted. I think it is going to be a great end-of-the-year read aloud! Can't wait! Check out the great HUGO CABRET website if you haven't seen it yet.