Holes

Dave Donovan

Author: Louis Sachar

Pages: 231

Rating: 8/10

The book Holes is about a teenage name Stanley Yelnats (a palindrome), who is wrongly convicted of a crime of theft that he did not actually commit. He is sent to a juvenile delinquent camp called Camp Green Lake, which ironically has no green whatsoever, as the lake had completely been dried up for decades. Here he meets many other delinquents such as Zero, Magnet, Squid, Barfbag, Armpit and X-Ray. The daily life at the camp is that the boys must dig a hole a day, large enough for their shovel to fit within it in any direction. At this camp, Stanley befriends a boy named Zero, who is clearly not a popular kid at the camp. At the camp, Stanley discovers the true meaning of a rough lifestyle; he only has 2 jumpsuits, on for digging, one for everything else, his showers are only 4 minutes of cold water, he sleeps on a rotten cot, everything in the facility for relaxing is usually broken, and he struggles deeply with his task of hole digging. Stanley is soon accepted into the group of boys when he finds a fish fossil, and receives the name “Caveman” (he then joins Gieco). Stanley starts to adapt to the camp, and becomes better at digging the holes. Soon Zero decides to run on the wild side, after hitting Mr. Sir in the face with a shovel, he scampers off and nobody knows where he went. Soon after, Stanley’s emotions get the best of him and he runs away after Zero, and what they come to discover is very exiting……Louis Sachar is truly an expert at combining multiple stories from all different time periods and intertwining them to create one amazing climax of brilliant coincidence: this is what kept me hooked the whole time. I deeply enjoyed this book; it is a fairly quick read but packs a truly fulfilling plot that keeps the reader reading.