Holes

Holes by Louis Sachar

Pages: 233

Reading Level: ages 9-12 years old

Fantasy

This book is about a young boy named who gets sent to Camp Greenlake for "stealing" a professional baseball players shoes. but he really didn't steal the shoes, he just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The shoes had fallen on his head when he was under an overpass. He blames it on his pig stealing grandfather. Who had a curse placed upon his family forever for breaking a promise to carry a gypsy women up a mountain and allow her to drink from a stream. He went to the camp anyway. He went hoping he would make new friends, and get to swim in the lake. When he got there he realized there was no lake, and he doubted he would make new friends. At Camp Greenlake, the boys are required to dig a 5 ft hole (wide and deep) each day. The camp tells the boys they are digging to build character, but in reality, the Warden of the camp is looking for buried treasure. It is deadly hot out there, and so the boys have to get up each day at 4 am to start the holes. All the boys in Stanleys group are loud and rude, but there is one boy named Zero who only talks to Stanley. One day Zero tells Stanley that he doesn't know how to read, and Stanley agrees to teach Zero, but Zero has to dig part of Stanley's hole each day. When the Warden of the camp finds out about this agreement, she yells at the boys. At this point in the book, Zero has taken enough crap from everyone, and he starts running as fast as he can away from camp. The Warden expects him to become buzzard food because the camp has the only food and water around for hundreds of miles. So she tells one of the counselors to delete Zero's files and pretend he was never there. A few days later, Stanley runs away too, in hopes of finding Zero. He eventually finds Zero under a boat drinking cans of old peaches. He called them "sploosh." Stanley once remembered a story about how his grandfather found water on something called "god's thumb" and survived in the desert. Stanley looked up to see a mountain shaped like a thumb. He and Zero set out to climb the mountain to find water. But on the way up Zero got sick, and Stanley had to carry him up the mountain. They found water and onions on top of the mountain, and survived for a week off of them. Suddenly something clicked with Stanley and he wanted to go back to camp to dig one last hole, in hopes of finding the treasure that kissing Kate Barlow stole from his grandfather 100 years before. He and Zero return to camp at night, and sure enough they find the treasure, but as soon as they do, the Warden shines a light on them saying, "You boys sure saved me a lot of work." Before she could take the treasure, lizards appeared all over in the hole where the boys stood, and these lizards cause a slow painful death with just one bite. The lizards didn't bite the boys because they don't like onion blood. Before the Warden could claim the treasure Stanley's lawyer shows up to take him home, because he has been proven innocent. And he gets to take the treasure(Because it has his grandfather's name on it, which is also stanley yelnats.) and Zero( because his files couldn't be found). The boys returned home as millionaires (well almost) and when they got home Stanley's dad the inventor had invented a cure for foot odor, and everyone said it smelled like peaches, so they named it sploosh. We find out in the end of the book that Zero was a decedent of the gypsy who had placed a curse on Stanley's family, and because Stanley carried Zero up the mountain, the curse was broken. This book has 3 stories going on at once, and is quite hard to explain, so I suggest you go out and get your copy today! ENJOY!



I would recommend this book to anyone! It is fit for all ages, probably no one under 10 though :)



What problems/conflicts could this book possibly cause? There are some cold characters in this book, and Stanley is a misfit. There is also some violence between characters. Like the shooting of a black man.

I give it 5 stars! It is one of my favorite books!