The Hole in the Wall

By Lisa Rowe Fraustino

WINNER OF THE MILKWEED PRIZE FOR CHILDREN’S LITERATURE

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Milkweed Editions
• Release date: Jul 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781571318213

Lisa Rowe Fraustino

Lisa Rowe Fraustino edits the journal Children’s Literature and directs the graduate programs in children’s literature at Hollins University. With Karen Coats, she coedited Mothers in Children’s and Young Adult Literature: From the Eighteenth Century to Postfeminism, published by University Press of Mississippi and winner of the 2018 Edited Book Award of the Children’s Literature Association.