Don't Get Bitten By A Yellow-Spotted Lizard (Holes - Louis Sachar)

Name: kenjohn

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Product:	Holes - Louis Sachar
Date:	18/03/03 (2494 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Beautifully written and crafted yarn

Disadvantages: Not a thing!

~ ~ 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 for her class. (last year primary) And all the kids in the class were apparently raving about it, and singing its praises.
So I decided to take her up on her offer, and see what all the fuss was about.

~ ~ “Holes” is a tale about, well… holes!!
Stanley Yelnat’s is a teenager who has been caught trying to nick a pair of old trainers belonging to a famous basketball star. As it happens, he isn’t guilty, the aforementioned trainers having quite literally fallen from the sky (well, a motorway flyover, to be precise) and landed on his head.
But the judge doesn’t believe him, and sentences him to detention at a young offenders institution called Camp Green Lake. There’s no lake at Camp Green Lake anymore, just a dirt-bowl where the lake used to be. The sun is hot enough to boil the blood, and all the young inmates are watched over by a weird collection of jailers.
There’s Mr. Sir, the head guard who has given up smoking and taken instead to scoffing copious amounts of sunflower seeds. A social worker with dubious morals called Mr. Pendanski, who all the inmates call “Mom”, and a female warden called Ms. Walker, whose family has owned the land around Green Lake for generations, and who paints her long fingernails with rattl
esnake venom!
The young inmates themselves are all housed in tents containing six persons, and are roused from their slumber each morning at 4.30 AM in order to start their rehabilitation. This consists of going out to the dried up lake, and digging a hole exactly five feet broad by five feet deep in the hard, concrete-like surface.
Digging holes is supposed to be a character building exercise.

“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”, is the motto!

Various dangers abound, including rattlesnakes and scorpions. But these are not the most dangerous perils, as the author graphically describes to us.

“Being bitten by a scorpion or even a rattlesnake is not the worst thing that can happen to you. You won't die. Usually.
Sometimes a camper will try to be bitten by a scorpion, or even a small rattlesnake. Then he will get to spend a day or two recovering in his tent, instead of having to dig a hole out on the lake. But you don't want to get bitten by a yellow-spotted lizard. That's the worst thing that can happen to you. You will die a slow and painful death. Always.”

And the deadly yellow-spotted lizards like to live in the shade provided by the holes!

~ ~ All the boys in Stanley’s tent have nicknames for each other.
Stanley is called Caveman, (‘cos he’s a big lad) and you also have Zero, X-Ray, Armpit, Squid, Magnet, and Zigzag. (what wonderful nicknames!)
Stanley befriends Zero, who entices him to teach him to read and write, in exchange for digging part of his hole for him every day. But when the warden discovers this ploy, the shit hits the proverbial, and Zero ends up running off into the desert, with Stanley following him soon after.

~ ~ In conjunction with the story about the boys, Sachar also relates to us the heartbreaking history of Green Lake, which over a century bac
k was a thriving community until the water in the lake decided to dry up forever. And, in particular, he tells us the story of a pretty schoolteacher called Katherine Barlow, who made the fatal mistake of falling in love with the local onion seller, a black man called Sam. These were unenlightened times, and the local community turn on her for her folly, burning down her schoolhouse, and hunting down and killing her lover Sam when they try to flee to safety in his boat. It was seemingly then that the rain decided to stop falling on Green Lake.
Katherine Barlow shoots dead the local sheriff, and turns to a life of crime, becoming one of the most feared bandits in the vicinity, under her new pseudonym of “Kissing Kate”. (so called because she has a penchant for giving all her victims a big, sloppy kiss!) It’s in this role that she meets our hero Stanley’s great-grandfather, who she relieves of his fortune.
She is eventually captured by one of the Walker clan, (who own green Lake, remember) but is bitten by a yellow-spotted lizard and dies before she can reveal (under torture) where she has buried her ill-gotten gains.
And that’s before you mention the other story about Stanley's “no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-gre at-grandfather” from Latvia!
Or the tale about Stanley’s father, who is trying to invent a cure for foot odour!

~ ~ Maybe you’re beginning to get the picture.
Sachar cleverly expounds the parallel stories, and then at the end of the book cleverly brings them all together. To tell you any more of the plot would be to totally spoil the story for you.
But there again, maybe not! The story is clever enough, and says much for the author’s inventive imagination, but it is the way that Sachar weaves his yarn that leaves you literally spell bound, and unable to put this book down.
The relationships between all the different characters are well developed,
and he touches on a number of contentious issues, such as innocence and guilt, and racial inequality. (some of the inmates are black boys)
But it is the simple writing style, and brilliant story telling, that most appealed to me, and which I’m sure endears the book to its many young readers.
It’s unusual to find a writer who can bridge the generation gap so effectively as Sachar does.

~ ~ I devoured this book in one sitting, and can’t wait to get my hands on some of the author’s other work. According to Amazon, Sachar has published 84 other children’s books, so you would have to describe him as a prolific writer.
This book was first published in the USA back in 1998, and released in the UK in 2000. He has a follow up book to “Holes” called “Camp Green Lake Survival Guide”, which was only released in the UK yesterday, (17th March, 2003) and which I now have on order.
I can already see a fight developing between my wee lass and me to see who will get to read it first. (she’ll probably win, ‘cos I’m a big softie really!)
And don’t just take my word for it that this book is a classic!
It is the first book ever to win the National Book Award for Young People's Literature awarded by the National Book Foundation in the USA, and the Newbery Medal, which is the highest award of the American Library Association, in the same year.

Highly recommended by the mad cabbie.

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Paperback - 233 pages (2 October, 2000)

Amazon - £4.79

Published by - Bloomsbury Children's Books

ISBN - 074754459X

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Copyright KenJ March 2003

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