HOLES

by Louis Sachar (4th+)

Stanley Yelnat’s trouble began when he stole Clyde “Sweet Feet” Livingston’s tennis shoes. Well, he didn’t really steal them and his troubles actually went back much further to his no-good-dirty-rotten- pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather, but none of that mattered now that he was stuck at Camp Green Lake, a juvenile detention center that was really a dried up lake in Texas without even a trace of green. What the camp did have was rattlesnakes, deadly yellow-spotted lizards, inmates with names like Armpit, X-Ray, and Zero, and a warden who was way beyond nasty. The next 18 months for Stanley Yelnats were not going to be fun. Every day Stanley and the other inmates each had to dig a hole in the lake 5 feet deep by 5 feet wide. The only relief came if you dug up something that interested the warden. If this happened, they you might get to take the rest of the day off. Two weeks into his sentence, Stanley did discover something and the warden was interested, but Stanley never got the rest of the day off. What did Stanley find and how did he survive those long hot days at Camp Green Lake? Read Holes to find out why.