Holes — Chapter 26

About This Passage

This sentence is how a whole town's mind changes in one day. Sachar tells us first that there were no telephones — and then he tells us that the news traveled anyway, faster than any telephone could have carried it. The sentence teaches young readers something important about the power of words passed from mouth to mouth: a story can walk across a whole town in an afternoon, and by nightfall there is no one left who has not heard it. Copying this sentence helps a child notice how Sachar tells big news in small, patient words — 'schoolteacher,' 'kissed,' 'onion picker' — and how the plain words carry the whole weight of the sad story to come.

Narration Prompt

Retell Chapter 26 in your own words, starting with the morning when not a single child came to Miss Katherine's school, and ending with the sad fact that it has not rained on Green Lake in one hundred and ten years.

Discussion Questions

1. What in the story tells you that the children's parents kept them home from school because they had heard about the kiss?
2. What in the story tells you that the sheriff was not going to help Miss Katherine, no matter what she said?

+ 2 more questions in the complete study guide