Holes (Louis Sachar)

Title: “The Holes” by Louis Sachar.

Characters:
✓ Stanley Yelnats: main character. He is an overweight boy, and he gets bullied at school. His family is unlucky because his great great grandfather was doomed for all of eternity by Madame Zenori. He is always in the wrong place at the wrong time. His nickname is Caveman.
✓ Ms Walker: she is the Warden at Camp Green Lake.
✓Counsellors at Camp Green Lake: Mr. Sir and Mr. Pendanski (called Mum by the campers).
✓ Camp mates of Stanley: Hector Zeroni (Zero), Alan (Squid), Rex (X-Ray), Jose (Magnet), Theodore (Armpit) and Ricky (Zigzag)
✓ Elya Yelnats: as Stanley says, he is his “no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grand-father”.
✓ Madame Zenori: she helps Elya to get stonger to Myra.
✓ Kate:teacher fall in love with Sam.
✓ Sam: the onion man, and his donkey called Mary Lou.

Where does the story take place?
The story takes place in Camp Green Lake. It has no lake, and hardly anything in green. There once was a very large lake there, but nowadays, everything is dry.
It is a juvenile detention and correctional facility where convicts of similar age are forced to dig holes to“build their character”.
Mr. Sir used to say that it was not a Girl Scout´s Camp.

The story:
At the beginning of the story, Stanley has been wrongly accused of stealing the shoes of the baseball player Clyde Livingston. As punishment, he was given a choice; the judge said “You may go to jail or to Camp Green Lake”. Ha had never gone to a Camp, so, he chose going to Camp Green Lake.
There, he had todig holes every day. One day, Zero ran away from there, and Stanley decided going to look for him. He founded Zero in a tunnel dug underneath an abandoned rowboat bearing the name “Mary Lou”. They could live thanks jars of very old spiced peaches that they founded on the boat.
They undertook the way to “God´s Thumb”, on the top of the mountain; they climbed in search of water. When they achievedthe top, they discovered a field of onions, which the boys eat and get strong enough to come back to the Camp.
One night, while everyone was sleeping in Camp Green Lake, they started digging a hole where Stanley had founded a lips ´bar some days before. Time later, they found a suitcase, but, suddenly; the Warden appeared and demanded it.
As it was dark because of the night, they didn´t realizethat the boys were covered by lizards…

I want you to read the book, so I am not going to tell the end of the story.

Positive points about the book:
It is easy to read and understand the vocabulary. You do not need to look the meanings up, you can discovered it by the context.
The story teaches us that everybody has to struggle hard to get in life.

Negative points about the book:
Thebook tells three stories at the same time; and sometimes it is hard to follow it.



As a conclusion, I recommend to read it. We really like it, and we hope you will enjoy it too.

YELNATS´ FAMILY

Stanley Yelnats IV is the main character of Holes. He is fifteen years old and his family has always had bad luck.

There are four Stanley Yelnats in the Yelnats´s Family and all descendants ofElya Yelnats. Our protagonist is Stanley Yelnats IV, his father is Stanley Yelnats III, his grandfather is Stanley Yelnats II and his great-grandfather is Stanley Yelnats I.

As it can see “Stanley Yelnats” was spelled the same fort-ward and back-ward and this is something that everyone likes in the family.

Elya Yelnats is Stanley´s great-great-grandfather. He lived in Latvia and he fell inlove with Myra Menke. Elya went to her father to ask for her hand but Myra had another suitor, Igor Barkov who offered his fattest pig to Myra´s father. Elya had not anything to offer so he went to see Madame Zeroni for advice, an old gypsy woman who had no left foot. She gave him a small pig that he had to carry it to the top of a mountain everyday. On top of this mountain there was a stream...