The Hole in the Wall
Young Readers

The Hole in the Wall

Winner of the Milkweed Prize for Children’s Literature
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Eleven-year-old Sebby has found the perfect escape from his crummy house and bickering family—a secret cave he calls “The Hole in the Wall.” It’s all the more beautiful for being in the midst of a devastated mining area behind his home. But soon after Sebby finds the hideaway, his world starts falling apart: his family’s chickens disappear, he falls ill with the mother of all stomachaches, and he finds a special pair of eyeglasses that show him a world where colors come alive and fly through the air.

When Sebby sets out to solve these mysteries, he and his twin sister, Barbie, get caught in a wild chase through the tunnels around The Hole in the Wall—all leading them to the mining activities of astrophysicist Stanley Odum, who has been buying up all the land behind Sebby’s home. Exactly what is Mr. Odum mining in his secret facility, and does it have anything to do with these mysterious developments? The answers to these questions take the twins to places they never could have imagined.

ISBN
9781571318213
Publish Date

Praise and Prizes

  • “Sebby Daniels is growing up in a despoiled landscape going haywire in a specifically twenty-first-century way. Lisa Rowe Fraustino is masterful in this tale of surreal survival.”

    Richard Peck
    Newbery Medal–winning author of A Year Down Yonder
  • “The plot twists and turns from one surprising discovery to another… . It’s the urgent details of conservation that will pull readers, and when the issues reach right to Sebby’s home, the questions increase. This title will capture young environmentalists.”

    Booklist
  • “A quick-paced adventure … The Hole in the Wall has everything a young adult novel needs for success.”

    Bloomsbury Review