Book Reviews

Louis Sachar published Holes in August 1998, and within months it had swept up both the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature and, the following year, the Newbery Medal. For a middle-grade novel about boys digging holes in a Texas desert, those prizes might sound unlikely. They are not. Holes is one of those…

In 1960, Scott O’Dell published a novel that almost did not exist. His first publisher turned it down because the protagonist was a girl rather than a boy. O’Dell held firm, found another publisher, and the following year Island of the Blue Dolphins won the Newbery Medal. The book has been in print ever since,…