Holes is a funny little book about a young boy, Stanley Yelnats, who believes he is cursed. He is falsely accused of stealing a pair of shoes and sent to a detention center called Camp Green Lake.
There, he and other boys, including his new friend Zero, are required to spend all day digging holes in the dirt where there used to be a lake. They soon discover that the warden is using them to dig for a hidden treasure.
Louis Sachar has a writing style that is all his own. I was especially impressed with how he gives the reader the story in little chunks that go along putting themselves together along the way. For example, early in the story he tells of Stanley getting arrested, but he doesn’t give any more details. Then, later, he says he was arrested for stealing some shoes that fell from the sky. Pages later, he says, no they didn’t actually fall from the sky, but rather, they fell on his head as he walked under a freeway overpass. In telling his story in this way, the author creates a reading experience that is truly unique.
Sachar, Louis (1998). Holes. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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