About Louis Sachar
“I want kids to think that reading can
be just as much fun and more so than
TV or video games or whatever else
they do.”
—Louis Sachar
H oles tells the story of how a single event—a pair of
sneakers falling out of the sky—changes the course of a
person’s life. Author Louis Sachar knows a thing or two about
that: In college he signed up for a job as a teacher’s aide at an
elementary school because he thought it sounded easy. As it
turned out, the time Sachar spent working with the kids at
Hillside Elementary School in California inspired him to try
writing children’s books. Now he’s an award-winning author!
Louis Sachar (pronounced Sacker) was born in East Meadow,
New York, on March 20, 1954. Sachar’s mother stayed at home
to care for Louis and his older brother, Andy. Their father
commuted to New York City to work on the seventy-eighth floor
of the Empire State Building. Sachar’s father sold Italian shoes,
which may help explain the strange significance of footwear in
the plot of Holes.
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As a kid, Sachar remembers trying to fit in. He played in the
Little League, ran track when he was in middle school, and was a
good student. He liked reading books, especially those by E. B.
White, who wrote Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little. Sachar also
recalls having to stay clear of the woods across the street from
his house where the older, tougher kids liked to play. When he
was nine, his family moved west, to a town called Tustin in
southern California.
“Writing was always my first love,” Sachar insists, but he worked
at a variety of other jobs before becoming an author. He even had
a short but surprisingly successful career as a Fuller Brush Man,
selling scrub brushes and other household items door-to-door.
Sachar went to college at the University of California at Berkeley,
where he majored in economics. He graduated in 1976. After
college, Sachar worked in a sweater warehouse in Norwalk,
Connecticut, and wrote at night. He continued writing even after
he enrolled in school to become a lawyer. In fact, it was during
his first week in law school that Sachar got the news that his first
book, Sideways Stories from Wayside School (1978), had been
accepted for publication. After graduating from law school,
Sachar worked part-time as a lawyer for eight years while he
continued writing children’s books. He finally quit practicing law
in 1989 to become a full-time writer.
To date, Sachar has published twenty-one books for children. He
clearly has a gift for creating memorable characters that readers
want to hear more about. Sachar’s first book, Sideways Stories
from Wayside School, evolved into a series of zany tales about a
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school accidentally built sideways, that is, thirty stories tall with
one class on each floor. Sachar has also written a series of books
featuring a character named Marvin Redpost, a boy who believes
he is actually a prince who was kidnapped at birth. Holes, a more
complex and ambitious book than Sachar’s earlier works, was
published in 1998.
Sachar’s editor Frances Foster has compared his success to that
of Roald Dahl, the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
and James and the Giant Peach. “Louis was discovered by the
children who loved his books, like the Wayside stories. There are
books which adults discover and push onto kids—this was
completely the other way around.” It’s easy to see why the absurd
humor of a book like Sideways Stories from Wayside School
would appeal to young readers: In one chapter, a smelly new
student turns out to be a dead rat dressed in layers of overcoats!
Sachar’s books have won many awards. Holes earned a dozen
honors and became the first book ever to win both the Newbery
Medal and the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature
in the same year. The Newbery, the most prestigious prize in
American literature for children, is awarded annually by the
children’s librarians of the American Library Association. Another
great honor, the National Book Award, is presented to one book
each year selected by the National Book Foundation as an
outstanding contribution to children’s literature. Sachar receives
a lot of fan letters from readers who have enjoyed his books, and
he visits schools and bookstores all over the country where he
reads and talks about his work.
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Sachar currently lives in Austin, Texas. He met his wife, Carla,
while visiting an elementary school where she worked as a
counselor. Their daughter, Sherre, was born in 1987. Sachar
enjoys playing chess, tennis, and tournament bridge. He also
likes to ski and play guitar. He has two dogs named Tippy and
Lucky. They are the only company allowed in his office while he
is writing.
