What was Holling talking about in the quote about the world sucking in its breath in The Wednesday Wars?The quote, "There was a little pause while...

Figurative language--figures
of speech--always takes some work to understand, though it is an important skill to
acquire since figurative language even enters into understanding history and history's
documents. One kind of figure of speech is an idiom. Holling is
using an idiom when he narrates that "the world sucked in its breath." Another kind of
figure of speech is a personification. Holling is also using personification when he
says, "the world sucked in its breath."

A
figure of speech is a phrase that has a meaning that is
different from the literal words used, as you say, for example, the world cannot
literally suck in breath. So the meaning of the phrase is not literal, it is figurative:
it means something other than the definitions of the words suggest. [Metaphors are
another figure of speech.] Idioms are phrases that are
culture-based and have figurative meanings. The fact that Holling personifies the world
makes it a little harder to sort the idiom out, so first let's look at
personification.

Personification
figuratively gives human attributes to non-human objects. In this case, Holling gives a
human physiological quality to the world: the world breathes like a human breathes,
which, as you've said, is not literally possible. So the figurative idiom applied to the
figuratively personified world means that the world suddenly drew in its breath with a
vacuum-like energy during the "little pause." The import is that you can form a mental
image of the world as a character reacting with Holling to events as they
occur.