Holes

Holes	Scholastic Inc.
Written by Louis Sachar	2003
Modern Fantasy	240 pages
Reading Level age 9-12	Newberry Award

Summary

Stanley Yelnats IV is sent to Camp Green Lake, a correctional facility for boys for a crime he didn’t do. It was all because of his pig stealing great-great-grandfather. Elya Yelnats in Latvia wanted to marry a farmer’s daughter and turned to his Egyptian friend, Madame Zeroni. She told him to carry her pig every day to the mountain to drink from the stream there, chanting a spell. Then he was to take her up to drink and chant as well. He realized the daughter wasn’t the mad for him and left for America, without taking Madame Zeroni up the mountain. One of Elya’s sons was Stanley Yelnats II, was attacked and robbed by Kissing Kate Barlow near Green Lake; he survived under God’s thumb. Kissing Kate Barlow wasn’t always an outlaw, she was a school teacher that canned spiced peaches and loved Sam, the black onion seller. The towns folk, especially an unwanted suitor of Kate’s, killed Sam for kissing her. Bereft, Kate killed the Sheriff for not stopping the mob and kissed him with her red lips. When Stanley Yelnats IV arrived at Camp Green Lake, there wasn’t a lake, or any water for that matter. Stanley was told by Mr. Sir he was to dig one hole a day, five feet deep and five feet wide- the length of his shovel. He meets the crew: Armpit, Zigzag, X-ray, Twitch, Magnet, Squid, and Zero. Stanley finds a lipstick tube with the initials KB. X-ray takes it from him to earn a day off. They all dig near where X-ray ‘found’ it. They find nothing and eventually move to their own holes again. Zero convinces Stanley to teach him to read in exchange Zero would help dig his hole. Mr. Pendanski, the camp counselor is especially mean to Zero and Zero finally had enough and runs off. Stanley tries to drive the water truck out to find Zero but crashes into a hole and has to run away as well. Stanley finds Zero, whose name is actually Hector Zeroni, under an old boat eating Sploosh that tastes like peaches. Stanley sees part of the mountain that looks like a thumb, if the lipstick tube was Kissing Kate Barlow’s then his great grandfather wasn’t crazy but survived at that tall jut of the mountain. Hector is sick from eating so much of the old canned peaches and Stanley has to carry him the rest of the way to the top. Stanley finds a spring that runs up the mountain with cool water and loads of wild sweet onions and thought of the song he had been told, If only. They recuperate and Hector gets better. Stanley explains the tube and how he wants do dig one more hole. They head back down with onions and the peach jars full of water. They dig most through the night and eventually pull out a thick heavy chest. Just as they were to open it, the Warden, Mr. Sir, and Pendanski show up and try to take the chest. Immediately there are yellow spotted lizards everywhere. Their bite was poisonous. The three adults wait for the boys to be bitten and die to get the treasure out of the hole. The boys are there for hours but are not bitten, it was all the onions they had eaten. A social worker shows up and demands to see Stanley, she convinced the judge that he was innocent and came to take him home. The Warden tried to take the chest from Hector, who said that Stanley’s name was on it because his last name was Stanley backwards. The social worker took Stanley, the chest and Hector, whose files were somehow missing back to Stanley’s parents where they open the chest and find they are rich! Stanley’s father finally invented his foot deodorizer, Sploosh, the secret was peaches. Hector hired an investigator and found his mom. They all gathered to see the commercial of Sploosh, Hector’s mom singing softly, If only.

Response

I really enjoyed this book. Every aspect was important and somehow intertwined the three different stories of the various times. For example: Miss Kate’s spiced peaches were what she exchanged with Sam for his work on the school house and what saved Hector years later when the lake had dried up and Sam’s onion boat overturned, and peaches were the ingredient that finally made the foot deodorizer work. Another thing that was prominent in every story was the song passed down through the generations that finally Stanley broke by carrying a descendent of Madame Zeroni up the hill and sang the song. The balance between the three was great, there never was part that seemed out of place.

Potential Problems

This has some verbal abuse that Pendanski said to Zero, shutting him down and saying that he would never amount to anything. This along with the overall dynamics of the work camp D is really negative. But the message of friendship between Hector and Stanley seem to overcome that and they become closer for it.

Recommendations

I would recommend this to students that struggle with friends and might be bullied in school. It would help them see it from a different perspective and how to react to it. It would be a good book for those who love figuring out how different stories within a book tie together and resolve well at the end.