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Updated November 18, 2003
Holes, by Louis Sachar (Junior/Young Adult)
Stanley Yelnats is under a curse. His whole family has been under a curse since his great-great grandfather, Elya Yelnats failed to fulfill his promise to a gypsy woman who agreed to help him win his true love. She warned him that all of his descendents would be cursed for eternity if he didn't carry her to a certain spring in the mountains if he broke his promise. He broke the promise and no Yelnats since then had been successful. Also, all Yelnats had only one child for three generations, and each new son was named Stanley. The family liked how the name was spelled the same forwards and backwards.
The Stanley Yelnats of this story was like all the previous Yelnats, a failure. One day when he walked out from under an overpass, a pair of sneakers hit him on the head. As he was running home with the sneakers a squad car stopped him, listened to his story and arrested him. The sneakers has been donated by a famous baseball player for an auction to benefit the homeless. No one believes Stanley's story of the shoes and the overpass, and he is sent to a boys' camp for his "crime" of stealing these famous sneakers.
At Camp Green Lake, Stanley thinks he will be able to swim and have some fun. He doesn't know that the camp is in the middle of a desert and that his punishment consists of digging a hole the length width and depth of the shovel used in the digging. Anything found is to be reported to the head guard immediately. What the guards and the warden are looking for is a mystery. What Stanley digs up is the truth about the camp and about his family.