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
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BetaChapter 16-Fourteenth PictureChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 16 Summary: “The Time with Josie”
The chapter begins the moment after Chapter 15 ends. Hollis tries to ask Josie whether Santa Claus is really Steven, but Josie stays asleep on the couch. The next morning, Hollis finally gets to ask Josie what Santa Claus looked like and what he brought, but Josie’s bad memory means she confuses Hollis’s questions with the mythical Santa. Hollis gives up and tells Josie they will be going home soon. She starts the long walk to the nearest pay phone, planning to call Beatrice to make sure she will come home and take care of Josie.
As she walks through the snow, Hollis keeps hoping she will run into Steven on the snowmobile, though she’s not sure what she will say to him if she does. Then she hears the buzzing of a motor and runs out into the road, and it’s Steven. They both start laughing hysterically. She thanks him for all the gifts. Steven says he knew she was at the house because the agency mailed out letters when she and Josie went missing. He tried to tell the Old Man his theory that Hollis was at the Branches house, but the Old Man didn’t believe it, so Steven decided to come on his own. Steven teases that she would have starved without the things he was secretly bringing.
Steven asks why Hollis didn’t come back to live with them, and she bursts into tears. She finally tells him that she believes she was responsible for his fights with the Old Man. Steven reassures her this isn’t true, that they are just very different people and that disagreements are natural in families. He asks her if she wants to come home, and by way of assent, she gets on the snowmobile with him. The two drive down the road so she can finish making her call to Beatrice.
Chapter 17 Summary: “The Time with Josie”
At the phone booth, Steven rambles on happily while Hollis dials the number for Beatrice that she memorized back at Josie’s. Beatrice answers breathlessly, saying she’s been calling Josie’s and worrying about where they are. Hollis explains the situation, and Beatrice immediately agrees to come home and take care of Josie. In the background, Steven is still talking, planning that they should paint Hollis’s new room green, even though the Old Man thinks it should be French Blue, Hollis’s favorite pencil color. Hollis smiles at how well the Old Man knows her. When she hangs up with Beatrice, Steven dials the Regans’s winter home. Izzy answers, and the chapter ends with Hollis’s question, “It’s me, Izzy. […] Do you think I could come home?” (162).
Fourteenth Picture Summary: “Christina”
The final section begins at an unspecified date at least a year after Chapter 17 ends. Hollis describes her room in the Regans’s winter house, which she did paint French Blue. A new picture hangs on the wall near the statue of her Josie carved, which is strung with beads Izzy “always wanted my oldest daughter to have” (163). Hollis says her goal with the new picture was replicate the “W” picture from the beginning of the novel. It depicts the beginning of a summer at the Branches house and shows the Old Man looking cranky at Steven—though she notes that, whenever they argue now, they teasingly but gently make sure she knows it’s not her fault. Hollis mentions that they still visit Josie and Beatrice each month, even though Josie only occasionally remembers who Hollis is. Hollis’s new last name is Regan now, though she “sign[s] my drawings using the three names” (165) to pay homage to her former self.
As the chapter ends, Hollis reveals that the new picture doesn’t exactly look like the “W” picture because Izzy gave birth to a baby named Christina, making five family members where the “W” picture had four. In the new picture, Hollis is holding her. Izzy credits Hollis for making the family lucky, since Izzy always wanted lots of children. The last sentence of the novel is, “A family” (166).
Chapter 16-Fourteenth Picture Analysis
Unlike every other section of the book, there are no intrusive memories in these last few chapters. Hollis does hear Steven’s voice in her head a bit when she figures out that he is Santa Claus and is hoping to see him, but the double consciousness that has defined the rest of the novel is gone. This serves two purposes. Practically speaking, it increases the pace, making the reading experience more exciting as the plot moves towards its resolution. Symbolically, it shows that Hollis has overcome her major conflict as a character—she is no longer haunted by her troubled past and is at last able to see things the way they really are.
The final picture illustrates Hollis’s arrival into peace with, and agency over, her situation by echoing the W picture that opened the novel. The W picture was so aspirational that Hollis had to cut it out of a magazine rather than drawing it herself. In the end, she can draw her own real life and fully claim a family for herself. It doesn’t look just like the original, since it includes imperfect features, like the Old Man’s frustrated facial expression. The final picture transforms an archetypal magazine family into a real-life family, where flaws coexist with real love.
