I was picking up some books at the resale shop and for some reason found myself browsing in the children’s books. It seemed like the usual fare at first, some Dr. Seuss, a mangy copy of a Clifford book, a few ratty Choose Your Own Adventure paperbacks, Hugh Hefner’s autobiography, some smut called “The Very Virile Viking”, and “Pimp” by Iceberg Slim. Tucked amongst all this tawdry trash was something called “Holes”, which seemed to make sense sandwiched between “Pimp” and Hef’s life saga.tI soon realized that there was a movie based on this book made a few years back, which I had never bothered with, but, to my shock and awe, “Holes” was the work of Louis “Sideways-Stories” Sachar. As a long-time fan of the preposterous “Wayside School” stories, I immediately picked this up (along with the other aforementioned books) and decided to bump it up on my to-read list. I had no idea Sachar had even done any other work, and I was interested to see what he’d bring to the table.tI have to admit, I wasn’t nearly as impressed with “Holes” as I thought I might be. This might be due to the unrealistically high expectations I had based on my previous Sachar experience, or the fact that since they took the time and bankroll to make a movie based off this work, it obviously had to be incredible. tThe palindromically-named Stanley Yelnats is a good-spirited and festively plump little kid who is shipped off to a boy’s reform program at Camp Green Lake as punishment for stealing a pair of shoes being donated to charity by Clyde “Sweet Feet” Livingston. However, poor Stanley never stole the shoes, he’s been wrongfully accused, which is something he’s accustomed to, since his family is under the influence of a malevolent gypsy curse which began due to an oversight by his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather. This evil hex has brought misery and financial ruin to the Yelnats clan since it was first laid, and each male heir to the Yelnats throne vainly hopes to be the one to break this vicious cycle. It isn’t looking too promising for Stanley to be the chosen one, as he’s shipped off to Camp Green Lake, which is the dusty basin of a once-flourishing lake which has since dried up under the scorching desert sun. His duty at the Camp is torturous; each day he must wake up at cock-crow and dig a hole five feet deep by five feet wide, while eluding the venomous yellow-spotted lizards which infest the area. Spitting in each completed hole is optional, and Stanley opts for this luxury at the insistence of his peers.tThe narrative of Stanley’s troubles at the camp are intertwined with the background of how this dread gypsy curse came about and also with the story of “Kissing” Katie Barlow, an outlaw that robbed his great-grandfather. While Stanley toils to dig hole after hole under the strict rule of the Warden and her lackeys (Mr. Pendanski and Mr. Sir), the tale of the curse unfolds, in which his great-great-grandfather Elya is vying for the hand of wealthy hottie Myra back in their motherland of Latvia. In order to win her hand, Myra’s father stipulates that the stud who presents the choicest pig as a gift will get the girl (which I hear is still a popular practice back in Riga), which leads Elya into cahoots with the gypsy, Madame Zeroni. Things take a turn for the worse for Elya, and he ends up not only forgetting to perform a favor for the gypsy, but he also gives away the hog as a wedding present to his rival. Even more spectacular is the downfall of the kind-hearted Katie Barlow, a benevolent teacher who begins an interracial relationship with an onionmonger named Sam in the Green Lake area. The ignorant townsfolk don’t cotton to this pairing and end up killing Sam (and his onion-chomping mule, Mary Lou), which leads the once-peaceful teacher to life as an outlaw. Barlow also happened to rob Stanley’s great-grandfather, and before kicking the bucket, she ended up burying all her ill-gotten gains somewhere in the parched and dry bowl of the former lake, a treasure yet to be unearthed that the Warden presumably is trying to locate with all this absurd hole-digging.tThe story is pretty enjoyable, for the most part it follows in the silly tradition of the Sachar work I am familiar with, however, the fact that he had to throw a ‘message’ in there pretty much turned me off. Stanley and his fellow detainees at the Camp are a motley bunch, a mixed-race group of transgressors who are coming to terms with their own cultural identities. When Stanley makes an arrangement with black camper Zero to teach him to read in exchange for his labor, the others drop some ‘slave’ references. The saga of Katie Barlow and Sam, however, far eclipses this childish prattle, and firmly beats the reader of the head with the ‘love-your-brother’-stick. At one point, Sachar even states that god himself punished the intolerant populous of Green Lake using the 100 year drought that turned a thriving lake into a dust bowl. The whole race relations bit was generally annoying, and perhaps what might have bothered me most was that in his preaching, Sachar makes it clear how wrong it is to consider someone of color illiterate, stupid, or treacherous, but it’s fully acceptable to include the stereotype of a curse-casting gypsy thrown into the storyline. tOverall, the story comes together predictably and nicely, but the insistence with which Sachar clubbed me over the head with his ‘message’ bothered me.
Everybody knows who this man is, right?I mean, I'm looking over the reviews for this book on the front page and I can find no mention. There's not a whisper of the author's previous successes. I'm absolutely flabbergasted that the word "Wayside" is not coming up in any of my "control+F" searches. Absolutely nothing."Sideways Stories from Wayside School"?! Really?! The absolute greatest story about an elementary school ever told? The one built sideways accidentally, with no 13th floor? Mrs. Gorf? Ice cream flavors that taste like people? Am I the only person on goodreads who can't do third grade long division but remembers the last names of the three Erics' in Mrs. Jewl's class?!?!?!?! (Eric Bacon, Eric Fry, and Eric Ovens)ANYBODY!!?!I am slightly confused and afraid. My universe is shifting. I thought everybody skipped their fourth boring field trip in a year to the National History Museum and read this book in the girl's bathroom. Or anywhere really. It never gets old."But Erin", you might say, "This is a review of Holes. Past books shouldn't matter. As you have said before, an author is only as good as his last book. Except for Christopher Moore, who can-do-no-wrong-for- the-rest-of-eternity-forever-and-ever-amen."Well, normally you'd be right. But Louis Sachar's debut of Holes, I think, is much more significant for what came before it. You see, millions of little children like me had giggled and gasped through Sachar's series on a curious school with absurdly crazy characters. He was one of the first authors, like Shel Silverstein and Laura Ingalls Wilder, to have his name, and not just the title of his book, implanted in my memory. For hundreds of little children around the world, I know he was one of their first! favorite authors.And so, when we discovered the dog eared and dirty copy of Holes on our library shelves a couple years later, a bit older (third grade) and a bit more mature (I gave up wearing kraft cheese singles with holes bitten out of them as masks at the cafeteria table) we dove right in without a second thought.And oh, were we surprised.Holes is not the light fare I, or I think any of my friends, were expecting. I think if you try hard enough, you'll remember the first story you read in which justice was not promptly served, or the assurance of a happy ending was not guaranteed. I may have read darker tales before this one, but "Holes" was a defining moment in my childhood. Stanley went to hell on Earth and he was innocent. Nothing magical was going to help him escape, no convenient story twist was going to come along and assure you everything was a dream. Above all, no adult was gonna come get Stanley and explain that everything a big huge mistake, and he was safe and fine and protected. ADULTS knew that something horrible was happening at Camp Green Lake, and nothing was as it seemed, and no one tried to stop it.Stanley was so alone. And you were alone right there with him.Here was something much more grown up, we realized. Here is something that has the risk of death and the threat of capture and the hope of treasure and it all feels so real! Here is something that is tricky in the way it is written, not front to back like so many other simple, dumb children's authors, but has many stories all tied up together in a way that makes us think, and figure things out, and if this character and that character were with his character, could it be that---gasp!And I don't mean to keep speaking for the rest of the universe's little children. But I know there must have been more than just my third grade self that closed the last page of Holes and sat very very still, mouth open, staring at nothing, for a second, and realized that reading was never really going to be the same.
What do You think about Holes (2000)?
Funny story: I'm trying to shelve this book, and can't remember if it had been banned (but I thought it had - google confirmed). At the same time, my friend Allison and I are chatting on Google Chat, and she starts ranting about how ridiculous book banning is (an opinion with which I agree wholeheartedly). Anyway, the conversation went like this: me: Is Holes a banned book? I can't rememberallison: dunno... the whole concept of banned books is stupid. I mean, you could find a reason to gripe about any bookme: yes, I agreeallison: I think The Replacement should be banned because there is a scene talking about knives in the kitchenallison: VIOLENCEme: haha just waitallison: and he sits on his roofallison: DANGEROUS BEHAVIORallison: RECKLESSme: He says the F word, and there are BOOBIES!allison: PORNOGRAPHYme: IMMORALITY!allison: lolallison: or you could go the other way and be totally ridiculousallison: Holes doesn't directly support a gay lifestyleallison: BAN ITme: But it does...allison: oh well then uh...me: all those boys are in and out of holes all day longNeedless to say, there was laughter. Sometimes I crack myself up. Anyway, all witty repartee aside, I really liked this book. I have no idea why it would have been banned unless it was because a kid hits a jerk in the face with a shovel for being a complete ass to him day in and day out? That's probably it. ENCOURAGING VIOLENT BEHAVIOR AND DISRESPECT FOR AUTHORITY! BAN IT!I loved Stanley, but in all truth, I loved Zero more. He was the star of this show for me. I wanted everything to work out for him, and I was on pins and needles worrying about him when things started to go bad for him. I mean, these kids committed crimes, or at least they were accused of committing crimes, but they weren't BAD or EVIL. Punishment is one thing, but the kind of things that these kids were made to do is nothing short of abuse. And what's sad is that probably isn't a far stretch from what really happens - although probably for different reasons. I enjoyed how the three different storylines all came together in this one, and seeing the little bits of each one felt like discovering a gem. I'd have this, "OH!" moment each time something was revealed that linked something else... Really fun to read. I really enjoyed this one, and I look forward to seeing the movie soon, since I hear from Allison that it's fabulous. :)
—Becky
This is just another one of those everyone-loved-it-but-me types of books where I don't understand all the love for it.I get it. If I was 6 or 7, I might have enjoyed it (though I'm not too sure about it). Considering I'm not 6 or 7 anymore, I now know when an author is simplifying/dumbing down his writing because he seems to think that this is the only way his intended audience will understand. That's just what I thought the whole time while reading Holes. I don't like it when authors think they have to use simple as possible writing so kids can understand, kids aren't dumb. This read more like a story from my 6th or 7th grade English text book from school (where, by the way, you're learning English as foreign language) which says a lot about the writing style. Apart from the writing style, the story was meh to making-me-feel-sleepy at best. I don't get the love for this book, I seriously don't. I only read it because my best friend "loved it in 6th or 7th grade" (that's what she said) and if it weren't for that, I probably wouldn't have finished it.All in all, for a "modern children's book classic", this was pretty disappointing.
—Rose
Great little book! If my future children are readers, this is definitely one I'd like to set in front of them. The main character, Stanley Yelnats, is wrongly accused of stealing a pair of sneakers. And when it comes right down to it, he's not all that surprised that something like that would have happened to him thanks to a generational curse that has affected his family going all the way back to a promise broken by his great-great grandfather. Through an unusual set of circumstances (call it destiny?) Stanley is able to write that wrong more than one hundred years later. Stanley is an overweight kid who doesn't have a lot of friends. His family is struggling financially but through it all, he is still a conscientious character who overcomes all his past struggles and is awarded with a very fulfilling (albeit coincidentally) happy ending.
—Beth F.
