Holes

I almost didn’t include this Newbery Medal winner book by Louis Sachar on my list of magical middle-grade books set in the real world. Is it really magical? Is it set in the real world? With a fourteen-year-old protagonist, Stanley Yelnats, is it even middle-grade?

Here’s why my love for this book won out. Sachar weaves together a quirky, complex story, just interconnected enough to qualify as “magical.” The setting, a juvenile prison camp with a sadistic warden, is “real-world” enough. And Stanley, though emotionally young for fourteen, is a kind, thoughtful kid well worth rooting for.

About halfway through… show more.

I think this book is a great read for all ages and the setting, Camp Green Lake, is not a lake, but a dusty dry desert.

This location informs the plot. It is a punishing environment as the boys sent there are being “reformed” by making them dig huge holes in the sun all day long. Digging holes is a metaphor for digging up the secrets of the camp and the threat of snake bites and dehydration and infighting enhance the tension.

This is a funny, entertaining novel about a teenage boy named Stanley who is sent to a boys' detention camp in the middle of nowhere for allegedly stealing an expensive pair of gym shoes. There he and the other boys spend every day digging holes in search of buried treasure the evil camp warden is trying to find. I love the absurdity of this situation as the camp is huge and their likelihood of finding anything of value is slim to none. Later, Stanley and a friend escape the camp and must survive in the wilderness without having brought food… show more.

It’s a near-perfect story. Was required reading in elementary school, and of course, became a major motion picture distributed by the Walt Disney company. It’s a truly timeless book that craftily exposits the not-so “happenstance” events in life that may seem awful at the time, but are actually a blessing in disguise. I may re-read this someday.

I used to be freaked out by coincidences. Synchronicities made me feel like there was something else at work in life, behind the scenes, in a bad way. This book is one of the many things that have helped me to feel the opposite. It's about a detention centre where children build character by digging holes in the desert. It's also about coincidences, and how they don't really exist. To me, coincidences feel similar to our insignificance in the wider universe. It can be crushing, or liberating, depending on how you look at it. It may sound silly, but reading… show more.

This Newbery classic is one of my favorite childhood books. I love stories where the past unravels mysteries about the future. Holes does this through a frame story format, and several mysteries are unveiled this way, including an age-old family curse and a thriving lake that dries up into a ghost town. The book covers a multitude of deep themes, including redemption, love, and family, and is one of the few children’s books I often reflect on as an adult.

Holes masterfully juxtaposes three interconnected stories and invites readers to explore how a single choice can change the trajectory of a family or a town. Time and again, it inspires readers to ask “what if ..." As you know by now, I’m an enormous fan of stories set in the natural world and Holes’ straightforward prose beautifully explores the landscape of the land surrounding the Texas camp for juvenile delinquents where most of the action takes place. It invited me to contemplate how I would survive in that world populated with fictional venomous, yellow-spotted lizards. I love the… show more.

This is my favorite book of all time. Though a children’s book, I found this book to be wise beyond its years, and to offer insights that no book written for adults has quite been able to capture. Family curses, combining past and present, unsolved mysteries- it has everything! Most of all, it shows how family legacies can impact generations, for better or for worse. We can’t escape our families, so it is best to come to terms with where we come from and even see the good in it, rather than trying to break away from something so integral… show more.