Plot
Stanley is serving an 18 month sentence for a crime he didn’t commit. His prison is Camp Green Lake, which has no lake and isn’t green. Every day, he digs a hole. Every day, for 18 months – to build character, the Warden says. But Stanley soon realises that Camp Green Lake has a secret, a secret connected to his own family’s past and his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather.
Author – Louis Sachar
Discover more about Louis Sachar
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Themes – universal ideas
Family, fate, justice, secrets, self-belief.
More to explore – motifs, symbols, context, setting
Ancestors, baseball, bullying, curses, deserts, deodorant, donkeys, emigration, fossils, homelessness, inventors, juvenile detention, lakes, Latvia, miscarriages of justice, names, onions, outlaws, palindromes, peaches, poverty, prison escapes, racism, recycling, rattlesnakes, summer camps, Texas, thefts, trainers, venomous creatures, water.
Did you know?
Did you notice that sometimes Madame Zeroni is said to be Egyptian and sometimes a ‘gypsy‘? Can you see a similarity between these two adjectives?
The Roma people are a nomadic group of tribes from northern India, but in medieval Britain, people believed that the Roma came from Egypt. The word gypsy was originally a short version of the word Egyptian. Nowadays, the word gypsy is seen as insulting.
X-Ray tells Stanley that his name is Pig Latin for Rex. So what is Pig Latin?
Further reading
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There are plenty of fantastic crime books. Try The case of the missing treasure by Robin Stevens for a short introduction to the Murder Most Unladylike series set in a 1930s girls’ boarding school with teenage detectives Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong. Library copy available.
The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke is a half magical story set in Venice about a group of children on the run. Library copy available.
For full on magic, try the Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer, which shares the exploits of a 12 year old criminal mastermind and his attempt to steal from LepRecon. Library copies available.
If you’d prefer some real life crime, read Scottish criminals by Gary Smailes. Library copy available.
Stanley gradually comes to have more belief in himself. If you’d like other stories on growing self-confidence try Anya’s Ghost by Vera Brosgol. (Library copy) or Smile by Raina Telgemeier (Library copy). Both focus on teenagers who feel they just don’t fit in.
For more on poisonous lizards, look at Reptiles by Jen Green. Library copy available.
There are some brilliant stories involving curses. Carrie’s War by Nina Bawden is set in a Welsh village during World War II. The evacueed children discover a skull that will curse the house if it is ever removed. Library copy available.
The boy who lost his face is another Louis Sachar story. This time a boy named David is cursed by an old lady when he tries to steal her walking cane and now nothing will go right. Library copy available.
Howl’s moving castle by Diana Wynne Jones is about Sophie Hatter, a young girl cursed to appear as an old woman, who seeks help from the wizard, Howl. Keep your eyes open for the wonderful anime version too. Library copy available.
Literacy and Language
There are three interlinked stories in Holes and the author uses parallels throughout Holes to bring them together e.g. Elya climbs the mountain with the pig every day and gets stronger each time; Stanley digs a hole every day and also gets stronger. It’s like history repeating itself. What other parallels appear in the book?
The ‘If only, if only‘ rhyme is repeated throughout the book but in slightly different ways. A repeated story naturally changes over time, in fact there are small changes almost every time someone tells it. Can you suggest any explanations for changes to ‘If only, if only‘ from the book?
Finally, Louis Sachar creates some beautiful images throughout the book. Can you identify what figure of speech this is?
He dug the hole into his memory
Numeracy
There are five tents for campers at Camp Green Lake. Seven boys sleep in each tent. Each boy digs a hole every day. So can you work out how many holes will be dug in a year?
If the Warden opened Camp Green Lake 20 years ago, how many holes would that be?
The book also says that no rain has fallen for 110 years, and that Kate Barlow buries what she’s stolen 20 years after that. If someone dug a hole every day since the treasure was buried, how many holes do you estimate in total?
Health and Wellbeing
At the start of the novel, Stanley is described as being overweight. He has no friends and is constantly bullied. But Stanley changes gradually through the book to become brave, self-sufficient and strong.
Use this website to suggest some reasons that this change happens.
Rights Respecting Schools
The staff at Camp Green Lake do not meet all the responsibilities of the UNCRC.
Can you identify any of the articles that are being ignored? Use this website to help you.
Developing the Young Workforce
The most obvious activity seen in Holes is digging, but Stanley actually develops a number of employability skills during his time at Camp Green Lake.
What does Stanley learn during his time there that might help him get a job in the future.
