So, one of our regular features here at LiT consists of updates on my wife‘s forthcoming middle-grade novel, Remarkable.

This update comes via Elizabeth Bird‘s blog, which I believe is called A Fuse #8 Production. She is a children’s librarian in the New York Public Library system.

She reported on a librarian preview for the Penguin Young Readers Group’s Spring 2012 releases. In there among the titles being released under the Dial imprint is this:

So they introduce Remarkable by Lizzie K. Foley to us by saying that it’s the most impressive debut they’ve seen since Savvy.  Strong words, no?  Then they proceeded to compare it to Holes in terms of its connections between characters.  And thus the bar goes up another notch.  I’m rather pleased with the premise, though.  In the town of Remarkable, everyone there is precisely that . . . except Jane.  This may well be a rallying cry for the dorky girls of the world.  Or at least the ones with overly talented siblings.

Savvy is Ingrid Law’s 2008 Newberry-winning novel, and Holes is Louis Sachar’s 1998 also-Newberry-winning novel.

In 2003, Holes was made into a movie starring Sigourney Weaver and Jon Voight. Holes also starred a young Shia LaBoeuf in his jump to the big screen.

So, without Holes, there would have been no Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which would have been okay, except that our culture would subsequently have been robbed of the phrase “Nuke the Fridge.”

More importantly, we would never have had video of Shia getting beaten up by a shirtless (alleged) Canadian. (NB: You only need to watch the first few seconds of the video, up to the point where the guy on crutches breaks up the fight. After that it’s just some dude slow-dancing with Shia.)

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My wife’s book is going to be just like that!