Holes (Louis Sachar)

Genre: Contemporary Realistic Fiction

Age Range: 5th - 7th Grade. This book references the sense of belonging amongst one's peers. There is also a deliberate exclusion of some characters in the book. Also, children hovering around these ages have a developed sense of justice.

Plot: Stanley Yelnats is a 13 year old boy who believes that his is under the influence of a family curse. The family got cursed by a fortune teller name Madame Zeroni because Stanley's grandfather Elya did not fulfill his promise to her. Wrongly accused of stealing a famous baseball players shoes, Stanley gets sentenced to do some time at Camp Greenlake, a juvenile detention camp where offenders are forced to dig holes of a specific size. What the boys at the camp don't know is that they are digging for something specific. They are digging for the treasure of kissin' Kate Barlow. Stanley struggles to be accepted by the other boys at the camp, but eventually makes friends with the boys in his tent. He is befriended by a boy named Zero. One day while digging, Stanley finds a tube of lipstick that once belong to Kate Barlow. The warden then forces the boys to dig more extensively. Weary of the way he is treated and the extent to which they now have to dig, Zero flees the camp. Stanley soon goes searching for him. Stanley finds him in a hole covered by a canoe. After an escapade up a mountain, they decide to go back to the hole where Stanley found the lipstick tube and dig up the treasure buried within it. They get caught by the warden, but are saved by the fact that they are surrounded by the poisonous yellow spotted lizards. Afraid to retrieve the boys from the hole, the camp staff waits until morning. In the morning, Stanley's attorney arrives to take him home. Stanley ends up inheriting the treasure because his name was on the suitcase that held it. He also broke the family curse by carrying Zero, Hector Zeroni and descendant of Madame Zeroni, up the mountain and singing to him. Stanley shares the treasure with his newly found best friend and uses his half to buy his family a new house. Zero uses his portion to hire investigators to find his long lost mother.

Characters: Stanley Yelnats, Hector "Zero" Zeroni, Elya Yelnats, Madame Zeroni, X-ray,
Armpit, Zig Zag, The Warden, Mr. Sir, Mr. Pendanski, Twitch, Stanley's Family His father and grandfather have the same name as he. Mother's name not mentioned

Setting: State of Texas, Stanley's Family apartment, Camp Greenlake

Theme: The overall theme of this book is justice prevails.