The Paintings of Hollis Woods – 2003 Newbery Medal Winner

Description

★ Newbery Award winner
★ 《Christopher Award》 Winner

The touching story immediately leads the reader to a satisfying ending. -Circus Reviews
This is a work that highlights the author's skill in handling language, and the descriptions are concise yet deeply immersive. -Booklist

▶ A ‘healing’ coming-of-age novel for children with broken hearts
– 《Newbery Award》 winner 『Paintings of Hollis Woods』
How does it feel to be abandoned by your parents? And how does it feel to not have a family that is always on your side? The fact that I do not have parents and siblings who should love me the most in the world is a pain that cannot be understood by anyone who has not experienced it. Children who are abandoned by their families or left alone without parents from birth are usually handed over to foster homes. The term 'foster home' is not very familiar to us, but in fact, it has been more than 10 years since the foster care system was established in Korea. Meeting a new family is never an easy choice, so there are countless problems that the child and existing family members must overcome. However, this is also the process of gaining the warmest community in the world. 『Paintings of Hollis Woods』 is a work that harmoniously tells the story of a 'foster home' where such pain and warmth coexist.
Everyone needs a place to stay. Isn't a person's growth ultimately a process of finding his or her own place to stay? In that sense, Hollis Woods, the protagonist of Patricia Reilly Giff's coming-of-age novel Pictures of Hollis Woods, experiences very severe growing pains. The main character is a child who lost his first home, his parents and family, whose name became 'Hollywoods', the place where he was abandoned as soon as he was born. Orphan Hollis is tormented by the absence of his family, but is always running away from new ones. 『Paintings of Hollis Woods』 depicts the journey of a girl who only wants to run away before being abandoned by someone, and sets out to find a place where she can truly stay.
This work was praised as the novel that best depicts the pain and sadness of modern society, where the number of children who are unable to grow up in intact families is increasing and is being hurt. It was praised for delicately expressing the sense of loss caused by the absence of family, the confusion of children left in foster care, and the difficulties experienced during the adoption process from a child's perspective, and won the Newbery Award and the Christopher Award, the most prestigious children's and youth literature awards in the United States. I had the honor of receiving the award at the same time. Through 『The Pictures of Hollis Woods』, an excellent coming-of-age novel that continues to be loved to this day, readers will be able to reflect once again on the true meaning of family.

▶ Portraits of a true ‘family’ discovered in fourteen paintings
– “Sometimes we learn the truth from our own pictures.”
How great would it be if there was a mirror that reflects children's hearts exactly? Sometimes art serves as a mirror that reflects the hearts of teenagers who are hurt and trying to escape from the world, as well as a therapy that helps them reflect on themselves. The mirror that reflects the mind of Hollis, the main character in 『Paintings of Hollis Woods』, is also a 'painting'. For Hollis, who had closed his heart tightly and did not communicate with others due to the hurt of being abandoned by his family, the only way to express his feelings and wishes was through drawing.
The 14 pictures depicting the time Hollis spent with the Regan family are an important key to unraveling the story. Aunt Josie, who is free-spirited and quirky, allows Hollis to draw freely, and they share artistic interactions together, bringing out Hollis' honest emotions. The 'healing' time she spends with Aunt Josie helps Hollis, who had been running away from what she wanted, realize her own value and take active action to achieve what she desires. As Hollis recalls the 14 paintings and gradually realizes the love of the Regan family contained in them, as if drawing a rough sketch on white paper and adding mysterious colors to complete a beautiful painting.
Readers will follow the girl's memories as if flipping through Hollis' drawings one by one. The paintings become a clue to the 'certain incident' that led Hollis to desperately run away from a family that truly welcomed and cared for her. In this way, the speculative elements hidden throughout the work serve as seasoning and consistently arouse readers' curiosity. 『The Pictures of Hollis Woods』 is a coming-of-age drama about a girl that is at times heartbreaking and at other times infinitely heart-warming, with an interesting plot that will remain in the hearts of readers for a long time.

▶ Main contents
Hollis Woods, who was abandoned as soon as she was born, goes through numerous foster homes but is unable to settle down in one place and keeps running away. In the end, Hollis is branded as an accident-prone child that no one will adopt, and she ends up becoming a lonely child, with her heart tightly barred and closed, unable to communicate with others. People in her various foster homes see Hollis, who paints alone, as nothing more than a wild and spoiled bundle of trouble. But Hollis only looks like that on the outside; in reality, she is a warm, serious, and artistically talented child. The people who noticed her talent and viewed her without any prejudice were her Regan family and her Aunt Josie. Her Hollis longing has always been directed towards the Riggan family. She was the only family that offered to officially adopt her, but even from them, Hollis ended up running away again. Hollis hopes to regain her sense of stability by living with her new aunt Josie, but she faces a crisis as her aunt's forgetfulness grows worse every day. So Hollis runs away once again, this time not alone but with Aunt Josie to the Regan family's summer home. This is the place where I once spent the happiest times with the Regan family. While living there, Hollis finally realizes the true love of the Regan family that she had not realized before.