Jonathan Litton, author of Journeys, The Earth Book and Touch-and-feel 123 is back! This time we will be exploring burrows, boreholes, Cavities and Canyons. This is a fascinating book that looks at all of the different types of holes, from household to human. Holes: Discover a Hidden World is a fascinating new book of discovery. Learn what’s going on, underground, and inside these man made and naturally occurring spaces. Jonathan Litton has written a number of books using both prose and verse. Holes (and many of his other books) have stemmed from Jonathan’s science background. Whether it’s sea creatures or sinkholes, Jonathan Litton tells brilliantly interesting stories about how our world is shaped.

From Jonathan Litton

"I’ve wanted to write about holes for as long as I can remember. I loved digging them as a child, whether in sand or soil, and enjoyed daydreaming about what I might find – a T. rex tooth, Roman coins, or a passage to New Zealand. I savoured the mud, sweat and sometimes blood of digging (yes, I was one of those kids!), and sometimes I was fortunate enough for my excavations to unearth real treasures – an ammonite the size of my head and an air raid shelter were two particular gems. Decades passed, with limited digging. Then several years ago, I began hollowing out a huge hole, and a secret one at that. One in which I could squirrel away and hoard ideas. I placed all sorts of holes in there – black holes, white holes and wormholes, arrow holes, keyholes and sieve-holes, subways, tunnels and escape holes, sinkholes, geysers and lava tubes, caves, crevasses and caldera, groundhogs, snakes and spiders, xylem, phloem and lotus flower seed pods, sponge-holes, plugholes and sewers, mouths, bottoms and tear ducts, mathematical holes, philosophical holes and religious ones. I waited until an opportune moment and then lured my publisher into the trap. Holes is the result of all this squirrelling and hoarding. And lots of new research too. The net was cast very wide as to what constituted a hole, and then came a sieving process and categorisation of the contents in collaboration with the editor and illustrator. Some of my most fascinating findings were of 'true voids' in space -- huge 'holes' of nothingness -- lizards which dug corkscrew burrows, a road tunnel which loops around six times in a spiral-like fashion as it climbs up the inside of a Norwegian mountain, the 50 million holes a woodpecker might make in a lifetime, and ingenious holes in the roofs of some Senegalese houses which funnel rainwater for family use. But perhaps most fascinating of all is the philosophy of holes. I'm studying for a degree in Eastern & Western Philosophy and love wrangling with deep thoughts from different angles. Thus, a philosophical interlude begged to be included in this book, which begins by inviting the reader to think of a hole in a sock. It can be counted – there is one hole in this sock. Or are there two? What about the intentional hole for the foot? Or are there thousands? Think of the gaps between the threads where air and water can get in, and pungent smells can escape! The hole can grow bigger. But what if the hole becomes so big that there’s no sock left at all? What happened to the hole? Does it still exist? Did it swallow the sock? Or did it disappear in a puff of smoke when all the thread disappeared? I hope readers will look at holes in a whole new light." Holes: Discover a Hidden World was published on the 14th June and is published by 360 Degrees, a new imprint of the Little Tiger Press Group. This non-fiction imprint publishes books that uniquely deal with a range of topics to make nonfiction more accessible to younger readers. The books available from 360 Degrees are filled with fun activities, high quality pictures and easy to understand presentation - great for making learning more interesting. Take a look at our 360 Degrees category for more books and information.