Holes

Author: Louis Sachar
Recommended Age: 10 and up
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
ISBN: 0-439-24419-6
Year Published: 1998
No. Pages: 233
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Main Character Gender: Male
Read & Reviewed by: Chris



 What does it mean if a pair of sneakers falls out of the sky and hit you on the head? To Stanley Yelnats it’s just more bad luck. The sneakers belong to a famous baseball player and Stanley is unfairly charged with their theft. He gets whisked off to Camp Green Lake, a camp for juvenile delinquents. There, boys are forced to dig holes five feet deep and five feet wide, daily, in extreme heat. Stanley and his new friends begin to suspect that there is no truth to the explanation that this is a character building exercise but rather, that there is something buried beneath the hard baked lake bed. Stanley is determined to figure out what it is exactly.


This book was a fast read and I thought Sachar’s use of flashbacks and a twist ending made this book intriguing. I read this book in one day and have reread it many times more. Sachar wrote Holes in third person narrative which helped me to connect with Stanley and know his thoughts and feelings as well as get a good sense of who the other characters were. I also connected to Stanley because his actions explained his feelings.

Holes left me satisfied and made me want to read more about Stanley’s life. Although the book is mostly set in the present, flashbacks bring you back to a time when racism and lynching were rampant in the South. These flashbacks help with the twist ending and give the reader a deeper understanding of the novel’s characters. I rated this book a ten out of ten and recommend it to anyone who likes adventure and mystery.