Team Info:

• HES Cubcats
• Susan Newman/Brooke Lawson
• Emily Coren, Jack Dyer, Xavier Gilbert, Riley Hernandez

Summary of Novel:

The Chocolate Touch

John Midas is a boy who loves chocolate.  He is also selfish and dishonest.  One day he discovers a funny coin with the letters JM on it.  He plans on starting a coin collection with it but decides to spend it on chocolate from a special candy store that only takes the kind of money that the coin he has is.  John buys some and eats it.  The next morning he finds out that anything his mouth touches turns to chocolate. His toothpaste, his eggs, his gloves, and his pencil all turn to chocolate.  He starts to have trouble when his trumpet turns to chocolate and all the kids laugh at him.  He also messes up a girl’s birthday party.  He goes to the doctor but the doctor has never seen anything like it before.  John’s mom is upset so he kisses her.  She turns in to chocolate!  John goes back to the candy store to get help for his mother.  The store owner gives John a second chance to be a better person and fixes her back to normal.  She doesn’t remember what happened.  John goes back to the candy shop but it has disappeared.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Hugo is an orphan who lives in the walls of a train station in Paris, France.  He works on the clocks in the train station. He steals food and small toys so he can fix an automaton that his dad was working on when he died.  He meets a mean man in the the toy shop where he has been stealing little toys.  The mean man has a niece named Isabelle who helps him.  They find out that the mean man is really a famous film maker.  He is going to help Hugo with the automaton but Hugo gets arrested by the Station Inspector for stealing food before he can help him.  In the end, the mean man stops being mean and his family adopts Hugo and help him with the automaton.

We created a video to show what would happen if John Midas helped Hugo Cabret escape from jail after the Station Inspector caught him stealing food.