Stanley Yelnats (that's a palindrome!) has been having a string of bad luck. All of the Yelnats men have been put under a curse because of a curse put on his great-great-grandfather by a Gypsy woman, Madame Zeroni. Stanley's bad luck lands him in a juvenile detention center called Camp Green Lake (which coincidentally is located on a desert area that used to be a lake) for a crime he did not commit. At Camp Green Lake it's no fun and games for the boys; every day each camper has to dig a hole that is five feet in diameter and five feet deep in the dry, hard dirt where the lake used to be. It turns out that the warden, a mean lady with a lot of attitude and a tough-as-nails work policy, is using the boys to try and find a treasure that is rumored to be somewhere on the land of the Camp. You'll have to read to find out what happens when the boys start finding things in the holes...
I really liked this book; it had a lot of voice and a really interesting story line with plenty of twists and turns that could keep any reader glued to its pages. The story has a ton of very unique and dynamic characters, with names like Armpit, Zero, X-Ray and Zig Zag. Sachar does a great job of using parallel plots to create foreshadowing without giving the ending away too early. I don't know if I would consider the narrative technique to be complex enough to use the book in the curriculum alone, but I think it would be a great pick for a series of literature circles, and I would recommend it to any student as an independent reading book.
Holes received the Newbery Medal in 1999, among several other awards and honors.
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