68 pages • 2 hours read
Patricia Reilly GiffPictures Of Hollis Woods
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2002A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaFirst Picture-Second PictureChapter Summaries & Analyses
First Picture Summary: “X”
The novel alternates between sections called “pictures,” which are written in italics and capture moments in the past through descriptions of Hollis’s drawings, and sections called “chapters,” which are not italicized and take place in the present. The novel opens with the first-person limited narrator, the protagonist Hollis, describing a picture she submitted for a class assignment when she was six years old. The picture is from a magazine and shows a family by a house, and “has a dollop of peanut butter on one edge [and] a smear of grape jelly on the other” (1).
Hollis’s teacher draws an X across the picture because the assignment was to find words that start with W, and the teacher says doesn’t see any W words, just a mother, father, sister, brother and house. Hollis thinks to herself, “How about W for wish, or W for want, or W for ‘Wouldn’t it be loverly’ […]?” (1). The girl sitting next to Hollis makes fun of her for failing the assignment, so Hollis draws an X on the girl’s picture, and her teacher sends her out of the classroom for a timeout. Hollis decides to leave school to go to back to her foster home, where she is punished.
From the present, Hollis reflects on her W picture and how it now reminds her of her favorite foster family, the Regans. She remembers their house and yard on the day she ran away from them when she was 11, and since she believes that will be her last contact with the family, she draws an imaginary X over that memory.
Chapter 1 Summary
The chapter opens with Hollis looking out the car window at her newest foster house. She tries not to remember the Regans’s house but imagines what her former foster brother, Steven Regan, would say to her right now and wonders if he’s thinking of her.
The car’s driver is the foster agency employee Hollis refers to throughout the novel as “the mustard woman.” Hollis tries to ignore the woman’s encouraging talk about how this foster home could be a new start and possibly a great fit for Hollis’s art skills since the foster parent, Josie Cahill, was an art teacher, and Mr. Regan “wanted you to have a chance to work on your drawings. He said it would be a crime if you didn’t” (7). Hollis tries particularly hard to ignore this reminder of her favorite foster parent.
Josie Cahill comes toward the car looking beautiful, carrying a large knife, and followed by her ornery cat, Henry. The mustard woman looks uncomfortable but leaves Hollis there on the lawn. Josie gives Hollis a tour of the wooded back yard, which is full of human figures carved into tree branches. She offers to carve one of Hollis if she stays long enough; Hollis says she’s not sure and briefly remembers all the previous times she’s run away. As the two carry an axe into the woods to cut a branch for Hollis’s possible likeness, Hollis realizes she likes it here and silently asks Steven, “I may just stay for a while. What do you think of that?” (11).
Second Picture Summary: “Steven”
Hollis recalls the many pictures she drew of Steven when living with the Regans. This quickly leads to her memory of how she came to live with their family. Hollis overheard her previous foster parent, “the stucco woman,” complaining about Hollis to the agency over the phone, calling her “fresh as paint” and “a mountain of trouble” (13).
After the complaint, the agency sent Hollis on a bus to live with the Regans; it’s a thirsty and uncomfortable ride. When the bus arrives at her stop, she watches a boy she doesn’t yet know is her foster brother, Steven, playing with a ball and he “nearly kill[s] himself trying to dive in front of the bus for it” (14). She brings the ball back and meets Steven and his father, who are both grinning and friendly. Steven asks her lots of excited questions and gently makes fun of her.
The three of them go into the diner, and her thirst is quenched by the very drink she had dreamed of on the bus, a root beer float. Steven says she can call his father “Old Man,” and tells her three things about himself: He walks everywhere, he loves cars, and he knows everything about animal tracks. This makes Hollis laugh, and they play checkers together and eat hamburgers. As the section ends, Hollis says her many pictures of Steven were always an attempt to capture her and Steven playing checkers together in the diner, letting each other win, and newly feeling like she understands having a brother.
First Picture-Second Picture Analysis
The novel opens by introducing its unique structural feature: the flashback sections labeled “pictures.” The very first lines of the book present the W picture as a physical object, describing the peanut butter and jelly smeared on the page before turning to the content of the picture. The opening establishes that pictures will not be abstract in this novel—they are Hollis’s only long-term possessions. “Picture” sections will evoke the experience of flipping through a sketchbook and inviting the reader to think about the artist as well as the scenes depicted. Though the W picture plays a defining role in the novel, it’s the only picture that isn’t hand-drawn. This demonstrates that she’s still very young and less in control of her story, and also that family remains aspirational for her, not something she can yet draw from life.
The sequence of First Picture, Chapter One, and Second Picture shows how the timelines will work. Italics immediately mark the “picture” sections as separate from the chapters. The reader understands the First Picture takes place in the past because the narrator introduces it by saying “when I was six years old” (1). After describing the W memory, she says it has come to signify the Regans for her, and that she recalled it “the morning I ran away from them” (3), so Hollis’s narratorial consciousness is located after the time with the Regans and some foreshadowing hints where the story is headed. As she arrives at Josie’s house in Chapter One, the lack of italics and the references to her previous placement with the Regans show this is the “present” of the novel. The Second Picture returns to italics and describes her arrival at the Regans’s, establishing the chronological starting point for that story.
A key trope the opening sections introduce is how Hollis’s memories are always flooding back to her, whether wanted or unwanted. For example, seeing Josie’s house instantly reminds her of the Regans’ house. In these early sections especially, Hollis is physically trying to resist the memories; when the mustard woman mentions Mr. Regan, Hollis “drew in my breath” and “closed my eyes as if I were ready to doze off” (6). However, she also introduces the imaginary voice of Steven, whom she invites into her head regularly to comment on the action and give her advice. In addition to being a presence throughout the novel, Steven’s imaginary voice foreshadows two things: that the plot will be driven by Hollis’s habit of remembering other character’s lines at crucial moments, and that Steven will come to literally watch over her in the end.
