Sam & Dave Dig a Hole

Sam & Dave Dig a Hole Synopsis

From the award-winning team behind Extra Yarn, and illustrated by Jon Klassen, the Kate Greenaway-winning creator of This Is Not My Hat and and I Want My Hat Back, comes a perfectly paced, deadpan tale full of visual humour.

Sam and Dave are on a mission. A mission to find something spectacular. So they dig a hole. And they keep digging. And they find...nothing. Yet the day turns out to be pretty spectacular after all. Attentive readers will be rewarded with a rare treasure in this witty story of looking for the extraordinary - and finding it in a manner you'd never expect. This is an all-new story from the award-winning team of Jon Klassen and Mac Barnett.

It offers a humorous look at the pleasures of outdoor play and its often surprising rewards. The interplay of text and art makes this a great read-aloud.

How did Jon and Mac come up with the idea for Sam and Dave Dig a Hole? Mac: Well we were having breakfast together in a diner in Los Angeles.
Jon: Yes.
Mac: I was eating chilaquiles.
Jon: I believe I was eating a fried egg sandwich.
Mac: And then we just sort of got to talking about this book. It combined our enthusiasm for interesting forms and digging holes.
Jon: Yes.

I think that’s what interested me most about the book — the way it was going
to be laid out as they got deeper and deeper in the ground, and the opportunities for a neat story there.
Mac: Oh, I’ll bet people would like to know that you drew the first sketches on a diner
napkin. I think that is a nice image.

One that will make people like the book more.
Jon: Yes.
Mac: I still have that napkin, not because of the sketch, but because I have a box of all the napkins from every meal I’ve eaten since 1996.
Jon: Ok!

How did you come up with the characters of Sam and Dave? Are they based on real children?
Jon: Hmmm I mean, they are based on our “ideas” of children in that they are short
Mac: And wear hats And have plenty of unsupervised time
Jon: With tools
Mac: They’re really just two kids who are excited to dig a hole, which I think is true
of a lot of kids.
Jon: Yeah! It’s a really simple but potentially exciting thing to do.

What do you hope children will take away from the story?
Mac: I hope they will take away a copy of the story, bought and paid for with their own
hard-earned allowance.
Jon: Or whatever things of value they have managed to dig out of the ground.
Mac: Yes, the real value of this book is not in any message, but in the many gems you can obtain by digging holes in your very own yard.
Jon: “There are gems in the ground in your yard”
Mac: WE WILL MAKE YOU MILLIONAIRES, KIDS.