holes	1	4		Stanley Yelnats isn't so surprised when a miscarriage of justice sends him to a juvenile detention center.  After all, his family has been ridden with bad luck ever since a one-legged gypsy put a curse on his great-great grandfather.  He is told that the hard labor he must perform...digging 5 foot holes in the dried up soil where Green Lake once sat...is meant to build character.  But it soon becomes clear to Stanley that the warden is really using the boys to search for something very valuable.  The story of the hidden treasure, alone with the warden, Stanley's friend Zero, and the curse on the Yelnats family are all part of a compelling puzzle that has taken generations to unravel.&&&&&&&&&&If you are looking for a truly remarkable novel, something to get your teeth into, something to make you think, and something to make you feel that you have just touched real class, then look no further than Louis Sachar's extraordinary, award-winning novel *Holes*.&&&&&&&&&&Camp Greenlake is a place for bad boys, where the belief is: "if you take a bad boy and make him dig a hole every day in the hot sun, it will turn him into a good boy." When Stanley Yelnats, accused and found guilty of a crime he did not commit, is sent to Camp Greenlake he really doesn't think it can be so bad. Stanley and his family try to pretend that he is just going away to camp like the rich kids do, and he promises to write to them every day. But the harsh realities of the camp, and the evil Warden with her lizard-venom impregnated fingernails with her own reasons for making the boys in her charge dig so many holes, sometimes make dying seem like a great idea. When Stanley leaves the camp to go in search of his friend Zero, their journey towards freedom becomes a battle with hunger, thirst and heat in the shadow of Big Thumb--a mountain so entwined in Stanley's own family history that he knows if they can reach it they will somehow find salvation.&&&&&&&&&&A complex story, riddled with harsh imagery and barren despair, Holes is a perceptive and intricate homage to family and friendship which never shies away from the harshest of realities yet injects the story of a seemingly hopeless boy with a sly, sideways humour that crackles against the backdrop of the arid wastelands of the desert. A must for anyone, young or old, who relishes an intelligent, courageous and dynamic read.	Susan Harrison	
holes	2	4	Never read anything like it!	I love this book. It's so funny, so dark, so gripping, and yet so deep - all in one. I love all the characters, especially the 'D-Tent Boys'	Carlo	Lostock Hall High
holes	2	5	Magic	I like the way that there's magic in this book as well as the harsh reality of being in a camp for 'bad boys' when you aren't really bad!	Ben	Manor Park
holes	2	3	Holes	I thought this book was great!	Kate Wilson	St Peter's Eaton Square	kwilson@scholastic.co.uk