Insomniac's blog

I am about a third of the way through the YA novel Holes by Louis Sachar. As I was reading through I noticed that Sachar sets the novel up in a different chapter pattern than what I am used to seeing. Instead of either starting out with small chapter lengths and working up to longer chapters or having chapters of approxiamately the same length, Sachar instead varies his chapter lengths. Some chapters are no more than a few paragraphs long while others are three to five pages. I also noticed that these small or shortened chapters are consistently spaced in the book, at least up to the point in which I have read. For example, the first chapter is a page and a half, the second a few paragraphs, the third is five pages long. This type of chapter pattern seems relatively consistent throughout the book.
I began to think about why Sachar would chapter his book in this manner. There are a few reasons as to why I think he set it up as such. One reason may be to encourage slow or poor readers to keep going with the text. English teachers love to assign chapters to read and if a teacher assigns chapter 1-3 for one reading, then the kids may get discouraged until they realize that the length of the chapter is only about eight pages.
Another reason why I think Sachar chaptered his book in this matter was for dramatic elements. If a teacher should decide to read this book aloud in class, then the sensical place to stop would be at the end of a chapter. This end of the chapter stop would help add to the pupils' interest in that the short chapters usually provide background information on the characters or plot and sometimes the short chapters address potential questions the reader may have. I am curious to see if Sachar continues with these short chapters as a break from the story or for clarification for the reader.
I think chaptering a book this way is a fantastic idea. It encourages slower reading pupils to continue reading while answering questions that the advanced reader may have.