As punishment, the boys here must each dig a hole every day, five feet deep and five feet across. The synopsis from the publisher reads, “As further evidence of his family’s bad fortune, which they attribute to a curse on a distant relative, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a hellish boys’ juvenile detention center in the Texas desert. I know that’s weird, but I get a real craving for them after reading Holes.

It’s also the book that makes me hungry for onions. Perfectly crafted, perfectly combines literary excellence and popularity, perfect perfect perfect. Read through each one of these comments and one word comes up over and over again. EVERYONE loves this book (and the movie was well-done, too.) – Jerry JarrellĬame to it too old to love it completely, but it is an almost perfect book.

One of the few books the Newbery Committee actually got right. A cast of intriguing characters tied together by an enticing mystery, this is children’s literature at its finest. We’re all friends here, so I won’t mince words – Louis Sachar’s 1999 Newbery winner is the closest thing to a perfect book as I’ve ever read.

A book that pays so much respect to its reader’s by allowing for multiple levels of complexity, thematically and formally, that I was tempted to believe that it was too tough for younger reader’s, until I saw the response it got from kids. What I found was something that I never would have expected from the writer of A Boy in the Girl’s Bathroom. I read and loved many a Sachar book as a child, and was surprised to learn that he was still writing when this came out. I have tried to read it in hope of learning some tricks about plotting, but instead I just despair that crafting something so brilliant could never, ever be done. This book is possibly the most brilliant book ever written.

Holes book to read