Title: Holes
Author: Louis Sachar
Genre: Fiction
# of pages: 233
Reading Level: 660L
Summary: Holes follows the story of Stanley, a 14-year-old boy who is wrongly accused of stealing a pair of sneakers. Supposedly, “It was all because of his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing great-great-grandfather!” (Sachar, 2023). Bound by his family's curse, Stanley is sent to a juvenile detention camp where their idea of character building is having their campers dig 5x5 holes every day. The novel flashes between Stanley’s ancestors and the present day showcasing the cause and effect of everyone’s actions. When Stanley finds what the warden of the camp has been waiting for, he is propelled into an adventure with fellow camper Zero. Will Stanley break his family’s curse or will he fall victim like his ancestors?
Genre: This novel fits into the realistic fiction category as the events and people described could have been real but are not.
Reading the Novel: This novel is a great class library read and could be a class read just for fun.
Teaching the Novel: This novel could be fun when talking about ancestry since Stanley references his family throughout the book. We could have students create their own family tree which would encourage them to talk to their guardians about their history.
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