HOLES By Louis Sachar

HOLES

By Louis Sachar

Being lucky is great, but being unlucky obviously isn’t.  The book Holes, is a great novel written by Louis Sachar.  The book was published August 20^th, 1998 and has won over 100 awards for the Young People’s Literature.  Additionally, with the book’s success, a film adaptation was created April 18^th, 2003.  I recommend this book for the youth who can relate to Stanley because of his bad luck, or, if they just want to have a good read.

As you can tell from the previous paragraph, the main protagonist: Stanley Yelnats IV, has really bad luck, so he’s frequently placed in ironic situations due to this.  A good example of his bad luck is displayed when a pair of shoes ‘magically’ fall from the sky and he goes to correctional facility because of it.  How?  Of course, you can’t turn down a pair of good shoes falling from the sky for free, right?  But it just so happens to belong to a famous athlete who has recently gotten his pair shoes stolen – and Stanley takes the blame, so, he’s off to a juvenile correctional facility, to dig holes.  Lots and lots of holes every single day – but why would they dig holes as a punishment to turn the kids into better people?  Obviously, the logic that the correctional facility has is completely wrong, so why make them dig holes in the first place?  Could it be for some entirely different reason, or is that really the way they intend to improve children?

Personally, I thought the novel was fantastic to read, because the further you get into the book, the history that the book provides become progressively connected to each other until they are all linked to form a very satisfying ending to the book.  Louis Sachar has really made a great success to this novel in terms of the way he portrays the story of the characters involved with the history of Stanley along with his family.

Finally, I would like to point out again that this book not only has over 100 awards, but it deserves all of the awards that it has been given.  This book has been a personal favourite of mine because of how it changed the way I saw a book; I now see them as an adventure, something for me to imagine a whole new world and not just paper with words on it.  This book has turned something I used to rarely do into something I loved doing.

By Richard Marinas