Module 4: Holes

 

Sachar, L. (1998). Holes. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Summary: Stanley Yelnats is an overweight kids with a family curse that puts him in the wrong place at the wrong time and is accused of a crime. He is sent to a juvenile camp where he and several other wrong-doers are sentenced to digging a 5 foot long 5-foot deep whole every day. Stanley gains a sense of himself, makes and breaks friendships and ultimately gets clued into a mystery that has been several generations in the making.

Response: I had a difficult time putting this book down! I never read Holes when I was younger, and looked forward to the opportunity to do so as an examination of award winning books. I loved reading how everyone’s story was intertwined; it had me constantly guessing and going back to earlier parts of the book. Overall, I think this is an incredible book that is engaging and easy to read.

**Note: I write my response before I look at reviews, and I was quite surprised by this reviewers critique of the ending. I thought it was well thought out, tying in the importance of Zero reading, the warden and her cronies destroying files, and the importance of Kate Barlow’s peaches and Sam’s onions.

Reviews:

Gr. 6-9. Middle-schooler Stanley Yelnats is only the latest in a long line of Yelnats to encounter bad luck, but Stanley's serving of the family curse is a doozie. Wrongfully convicted of stealing a baseball star's sneakers, Stanley is sentenced to six months in a juvenile-detention center, Camp Green Lake. "There is no lake at Camp Green Lake," where Stanley and his fellow campers (imagine the cast from your favorite prison movie, kid version) must dig one five-by-five hole in the dry lake bed every day, ostensibly building character but actually aiding the sicko warden in her search for buried treasure. Sachar's novel Holes mixes comedy, hard-hitting realistic drama, and outrageous fable in a combination that is, at best, unsettling. The comic elements especially the banter between the boys (part scared teens, part Cool Hand Luke wanna-bes) work well, and the adventure story surrounding Stanley's rescue of his black friend Zero, who attempts to escape, provides both high drama and moving human emotion. But the ending, in which realism gives way to fable, while undeniably) clever, seems to belong in another book entirely, dulling the impact of all that has gone before. These mismatched parts don't add up to a coherent whole, but they do deliver a fair share of entertaining and sometimes compelling moments.

Bill, O. (2002). Review of Holes. In S. Peacock (Ed.), Children's Literature Review (Vol. 79). Detroit: Gale. (Reprinted from Booklist, 1998, June 1, 94[19-20], 1750)

Program: Create a display with “holes” (two pieces of brown paper circles attached together at the top) that can be lifted to reveal information. Kids can fill it with pictures or words to illustrate their family inheritance. It can be a combination of tangible (jewelry, land) and intangible (love, good luck, bad luck) things.