Pictures of Hollis Woods

by Patricia Reilly Giff

Newbery Award Winner

Hollis Woods is a 12-year old girl who has been in the foster care system all of her life. She is smart and a talented artist and makes sense of her life with her drawings. She desperately wants to be part of a family who loves her, but that dream seems very far out of her grasp. 

Hollis arrives at the home of a woman named Josie, a retired art teacher. Josie is a free spirit, but beginning to forget things and be more absent-minded. We begin to see that Josie needs Hollis as much or more than Hollis needs her. 

Throughout the story, Hollis remembers the Regan family who is the closest she had ever been to having a real family, but Hollis’s stay with them ended with something bad happening and as the story with Josie unfolds, so does the story of the Regans.

Hollis’s past life with the Regans and her life with Josie converge as she tries to protect Josie and herself. It seems a kind of redemption that by doing what she can to save Josie, she finally gets what she has always wanted.

Literary Qualities – Understatement – When Hollis first meets Josie, she says, “I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I could feel a pencil in my hand, moving across the paper, drawing her face, her eyes, the knife.”  The reader immediately understands how Hollis is drawn to Josie by the sense of urgency she has to draw her.

We also get unexpected insights from the book. It is really by wanting to help Josie that Hollis is able to find her way and help her dream of being a part of a family come true.

Giff, P. R. (2004). Pictures of Hollis Woods. New York, NY: Random House.