Sachar's success at blending outlandish humor with poignant and heartwarming scenes makes this book ideal for reading aloud and for a novel study. Holes is really two stories: one chronicles the unfortunate life of Stanley Yelnats and the other is a tall tale about Stanley's great-great-grandfather who meets his fate when he encounters Kissing Kate Barlow, a feared outlaw of the Wild West. I worked part-time as a lawyer for eight years as I continued to write children's books. 'I attended Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco and graduated in 1980. It was my experience there that led to my first book, Sideways Stories from Wayside School, which I wrote in 1976. During my last year there, I helped out at an elementary school–Hillside School. 'I went to college at the University of California, as Berkeley. When I was nine, we moved to Tustin, California. My father worked on the 78th floor of the Empire State Building. 'I was born March 20, 1954, in East Meadow, New York. By the time a book is finished, it is impossible for me to say how I got the various ideas. The story changes greatly during the first few drafts. I start with a small idea, and it grows as I write. 'I write five or six drafts of each book. By not allowing myself to talk about it, the only way I can let it out, is to finish writing it.

I do this for a variety of reasons, but mainly motivation. It took me a year and a half to write Holes, and I never told anyone anything about it during all that time. 'I never talk about a book until it is finished. In a parallel story about Stanley's 'no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather,' the mystery of the curse is unveiled and Stanley, in his efforts to help a friend, suddenly finds himself in control of his own destiny and the fate of his unlucky family. He is soon faced with a group of unhappy, unaccepting campers (inmates) and an evil warden who uses the boys to dig holes in search of buried treasure.Īs the summer progresses, Stanley makes some startling discoveries about himself, the true meaning of friendship, and the ancient curse that has haunted his family for generations. Having never attended summer camp, Stanley naively believes this to be a new opportunity. Stanley Yelnats, falsely arrested for stealing a pair of sneakers, is sentenced to serve time at Camp Green Lake, a juvenile detention facility in the middle of a Texas desert. In this funny yet poignant story, a boy embarks on a personal journey that changes his life, as he spends the summer paying for a crime he didn't commit.

Holes by louis sachar