Holes By Louis Sachar For
Stanley Yelnats' family has a history of bad luck, so when a miscarriage of justice sends him to Camp Green Lake Juvenile Detention Centre (which isn't green and doesn't have a lake) he is not surprised. Every day he and the other inmates are told to dig a hole, five foot wide by five foot deep, reporting anything they find. The evil warden claims that it is character building, but this is a lie and Stanley must dig up the truth. Wonderfully inventive, compelling and hilarious, Louis Sachar has created a masterpiece.
This multi-million bestseller now in an exciting new package ahead of the publication of Sachar's newest 9-11 fiction title Fuzzy Mud (publishing August 2015) Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC ISBN: 231 Number of pages: 240 Weight: 175 g Dimensions: 198 x 129 mm MEDIA REVIEWS. `Holes is one of those instant classics that adults, as well as children over eight, will thoroughly enjoy. Sachar has created something quite different from JK Rowling or Philip Pullman, but no less enchanting'.
Independent on Sunday. `If you want a witty, moving read that grabs you and never lets up, look no further than Holes'. The Daily Telegraph. Forget the fame and glamour of Holes, the movie and the rest. Just remember Camp Green Lake and that story that gave us one of the best books of the last ten years. Books for Keeps.
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He Didn't Do It November 15, 1998 He Didn't Do It A tale of prison life, buried treasure, helpful lizards and smelly feet. By BETSY HEARNE HOLES By Louis Sachar. Frances Foster Books/ Farrar, Straus & Giroux. (Ages 12 and up) magine a game where you know enough to make the next move exciting but not enough to know what that move is going to be.
That's 'Holes,' as deep as its title. You and any reasonable (or unreasonable) youth of your acquaintance will be drawn into this one. And it's not a black hole. Spiraling between past and present, Louis Sachar, whose light fiction for middle-grade readers ('There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom,' 'Marvin Redpost: Alone in His Teacher's House') has won him popular acclaim, abandons conventional plot for a more innovative mix of realism and legend, with elements of mystery that keep the surrealistic events suspenseful. Stanley Yelnats arrives at a Texas juvenile correctional facility called Camp Green Lake. The name is ironic, because there hasn't been a drop of water in this desert setting for a hundred years and the blazing sun has long since killed everything green.
Stanley is innocent of anything except being in the wrong place at the wrong time, a fate that has plagued his family since his Latvian great-great-grandfather broke a promise to a helpful Gypsy. Some of this Stanley knows, and some he doesn't.
Holes By Louis Sachar Free Online Book
Readers sometimes find out before he does, or sometimes at the same time, a trick of pacing and alternating scenarios that Sachar has mastered to intense effect. Every revelation of the past ups the ante of the present. The ominous warden - she wears nail polish that's color-enhanced with rattlesnake venom - also has a past, as do the inmates, especially one nicknamed Zero, whom even the (deceptively) kindhearted counselor calls worthless. Most of all, the lake has a past, and as the boys are ordered to dig holes - each boy, one hole, five feet by five feet, every day - we discover how all of these pasts intersect for a dangerous climax and a hole that holds more than dirt. Sounds grim, doesn't it? Nope, it's funny. Sachar inserts humor that gives the suspense steep edges; the tone is as full of surprises as the plot.
Stanley's father, for instance, is an inventor working on a way to recycle old sneakers. In the process he hits the jackpot (though only after Stanley has broken the Gypsy's curse) with a recipe for curing foot odor. Stanley's incarceration occurs after the police arrest him for stealing a pair of the famous baseball player Sweet Feet Livingston's smelly sneakers (they actually fall on Stanley's head from out of the sky, but that's another subplot). One of the warden's ancestors was named Trout Walker. (His real name was Charles Walker, but everyone called him Trout because his two feet smelled like a couple of dead fish.) The inmate Stanley replaces is nicknamed Barf Bag. The onion fields that save Stanley and company from starvation also make the boys stink to high heaven.
Now, any mention of body odor is guaranteed to send kids into gales of laughter. Even adults may not be able to restrain a smile at this goofy motif, cleverly interwoven as it is into an intricate scheme of predestination. One of the most successful aspects of Sachar's writing is his use of folkloric devices, especially the repetition of themes and phrases ('Zero said nothing') that heighten anticipation (Zero finally says something crucial). Other traditional features include the rhyming song that has come down through Stanley's family, the moon's recurrence in both the song and the barren landscape pitted with craters by years of digging - for treasure, as it turns out - and the treasure hunt itself, not to mention a few animal helpers in the unlikely guise of some lethal yellow-spotted lizards.
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A lthough nothing is quite what it seems in this wildly inventive novel, the patterns of language and narrative assure us that everything will eventually make sense. And it does, in ways that I will not give away lest readers be denied the satisfaction of finding out for themselves.
Between the tightly fitted plot and the signifying wordplay, 'Holes' is a smart jigsaw puzzle of a novel that middle-grade youngsters will want to solve on their own. And they won't mind the compact chapters, poetic in a strictly action-packed way. One last note: A lot of nearly flawless children's novels (Natalie Babbitt's 'Tuck Everlasting' comes to mind) are written by women and are strongest in their appeal to girls, though boys certainly enjoy them in a classroom or group situation.
Holes Louis Sachar Book Report
This children's book - a finalist for the National Book Award to be announced this week - is written by a man and projects magnetic attraction for boys, but make sure the girls don't miss out on it. Tough, truehearted and ultimately tender, 'Holes' is also a member of that endangered species, the family read-aloud. You can even have a contest: which listener will notice first that Yelnats is Stanley spelled backward? Betsy Hearne is the author of 'Seven Brave Women.'
' She teaches children's literature at the University of Illinois, Carbondale.
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