-
Access Our
Best Book Club
Books of 2025!
Summary | Excerpt | Reading Guide | Reviews | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
Stanley tries to dig up the truth in this inventive and darkly humorous tale of crime and punishment—and redemption. Ages 10+
Stanley Yelnats is under a curse. A curse that began with his no-good-dirty-rotten- pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather and has since followed generations of Yelnats. Now Stanley has been unjustly sent to a boys' detention center, Camp Green Lake, where the warden makes the boys "build character" by spending all day, every day, digging holes: five feet wide and five feet deep. It doesn't take long for Stanley to realize there's more than character improvement going on at Camp Green Lake. The boys are digging holes because the warden is looking for something. Stanley tries to dig up the truth in this inventive and darkly humorous tale of crime and punishment—and redemption.
Stanley
Yelnats was the only passenger on the bus, not counting the driver or
the guard. The guard sat next to the driver with his seat turned around
facing Stanley. A rifle lay across his lap.
Stanley was sitting about ten rows back, handcuffed to his armrest. His
backpack lay on the seat next to him. It contained his toothbrush,
toothpaste, and a box of stationary his mother had given him. He’d
promised to write to her at least once a week.
He looked out the window, although there wasn’t much to see—mostly
fields of hay and cotton. He was on a long bus ride to nowhere. The bus
wasn’t air-conditioned, and the hot heavy air was almost as stifling as
the handcuffs.
Stanley and his parents had tried to pretend that he was just going away
to camp for a while, just like rich kids do. When Stanley was younger he
...
If you liked Holes, try these:
by Geraldine McCaughrean
Published 2012
Pepper's fourteenth birthday is a momentous one.
It's the day he's supposed to die.
Everyone seems resigned to it—even Pepper, although he would much prefer to live. But can you sidestep Fate? Jump sideways into a different life?
by Siobhan Dowd
Published 2011
Memories of mum are the only thing that make Holly Hogan happy. Then she finds the wig, and everything changes. Wearing the long, flowing blond locks she feels transformed. She’s not Holly anymore, she’s Solace: the girl with the slinkster walk and the supersharp talk.
Awake in the Floating City
by Susanna Kwan
A debut novel about an artist and a 130-year-old woman bound by love and memory in a future, flooded San Francisco.
The Original Daughter
by Jemimah Wei
A dazzling debut by Jemimah Wei about ambition, sisterhood, and family bonds in turn-of-the-millennium Singapore.
Serial Killer Games
by Kate Posey
A morbidly funny and emotionally resonant novel about the ways life—and love—can sneak up on us (no matter how much pepper spray we carry).
Ginseng Roots
by Craig Thompson
A new graphic memoir from the author of Blankets and Habibi about class, childhood labor, and Wisconsin’s ginseng industry.
If every country had to write a book about elephants...
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!