Rating: 9 of 10 stars
Because of an instance of mistaken identity, Stanley Yelnats is sent to Camp Green Lake to "make a better boy of him." Never mind that Camp Green Lake actually is a juvenile detention center, never mind that there is no lake, or that the holes the children are forced to dig every day are not for building character but rather for something entirely less noble. Holes is the story of a boy, not so much at odds with his fate, but, ultimately, at evens with it. Stanley finds a way to transform the bad luck inherited from his "no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather" into the power to find what matters in a place where gratuitous unkindness, the bizarre, and the absurd are an everyday reality.
A doff of the hat to Louis Sachar for a close-to-perfect book. One year I read the whole thing to both fifth grade classes; everybody ate sunflower seeds beginning with the chapter in which the spilled seeds are discovered. Of course they broke into cheers at the downfall of the evil warden. Not to be missed!
The movie version of Holes is, like The Princess Bride, one of the very few books that make a successful transition between forms.
Usual borrowers: Fifth grade and up
Genres: Adventure, fantasy, humor, people and relationships
Also: 8 1/2 or Better List
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