Pictures Of Hollis Woods

Pictures of Hollis Woods by Patricia Reilly Giff is a novel for middle readers about a foster child, the eponymous Hollis Woods, and how she finds a family. It was originally published in 2002 and became a Newbery Honor Book in 2003. In 2007, Hallmark Hall of Fame adapted the novel into a movie. Giff is the author of many popular books for children, including series like Kids of the Polk Street School, Friends and Amigos, and Polka Dot Private Eye, and several other standalone novels for middle readers that have won awards from Newberry and the ALA, amongst others. Her books are frequently taught and read aloud in classrooms. Pictures of Hollis Woods has been lauded as a good introduction to the experiences of some children in the foster care system.

Plot Summary

Pictures of Hollis Woods is primarily set in a single year of the life of Hollis Woods, who is also the first-person narrator. The novel has two timelines and switches back and forth between them in alternating sections. It gradually reveals what happened in the past while simultaneously tracking Hollis through the present.

After a lifetime of running away from foster home after foster home, the 11-year-old artist Hollis finds placement with a family called the Regans who welcome her to their summer cabin in upstate New York at the foot of a small mountain.