Holes - Louis Sachar

Stanley Yelnats never has much luck, in fact his whole family seem to be having a generational run of bad luck, there is a possibility that he is the decendant of a man who forgot to fulfil his promise to a wise woman and so cursed whole generations of his family. But his mother has never believed that. So Stanley is not all that surprised when he is arrested for a crime he is innocent of and sent to the desert to a correctional facility. There he and the other boys have to dig holes, every single day. When Stanley gets wind that they are not simply there to build character but to dig something unknown up, Stanley hatches a plan to make his life easier. That ...  Read the complete review

Stanley Yelnats is not a lucky child - far from it. This runs in his family, and has done since his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing great grandfather made away with the pig that earned him his moniker. Luck appears to have taken against Stanley big-time now though, as, convicted of a crime he was entirely innocent of, he has been taken from his comfortable, if slightly smelly home and dispatched to Camp Green Lake. The Camp, it must be said, it considerably less pleasant than it sounds; for starters, there is no Lake, and there's not a whole lot of green either - Stanley's new home is essentially a labour camp for errant youths. The children rise before the ...  Read the complete review

"If you take a bad boy and make him dig a hole every day in the hot sun, it will turn him into a good boy. That what was what some people thought." Is that what you think? I'm not sure. The palindromic Stanley Yelnats, in any case, is not a bad boy. Victim of a miscarriage of justice, Stanley has been sent to Camp Green Lake. Stanley is from a poor family and he's never spent a summer at camp before. But while thousands of other young Americans are having fun, Stanley is digging holes at a juvenile correction centre. Camp Green Lake isn't fun. Digging holes ...  Read the complete review

~ ~ I’m not in the habit of reading kiddies’ books. Really I’m not. But when my wee lass practically implored me to read a book called “Holes” by an American author called Louis Sachar, then I knew before I even picked it up that it was going to be something special. You see, she wouldn’t be in the habit of asking her old dad to read her literature. In fact, quite the contrary. She tends to keep me well away from her things, in case I put on my “puritan” hat, and declare it as “not suitable”. (I don’t actually do that TOO often!) Her school had recommended this book by Sachar as good reading ...  Read the complete review

I first came across Holes when a child I was working with chose to read it to me as his reading book. Unfortunately the child took it on holiday when we were halfway through and I didn't hear the end. Since I was on maternity leave, I decided to get a few books to entertain myself and chose this. I got my copy off E-bay for £2.50 including postage. RRP is £6.99 and it is widely available online and in bookstores (as well as most local libraries). Plot Stanley Yelnats is convicted of a stealing some trainers when he didn't. Offered the choice of prison or "Camp Green Lake" he chooses camp. Only to find no lake, no green and the only ...  Read the complete review