When Stanley Yelnats (Stanley spelt backwards) was sent to a juvenile detention camp, Camp Green Lake, for a crime he did not commit, he thought that it was possibly due to a curse placed upon his family many generations ago when his great, great grandfather had broken a promise made to Madame Zeroni. Since then family members regularly seemed to encounter bad luck.
There is no longer a lake at Camp Green Lake - the lake dried up more than 100 years ago - just dry dirt. Each days the boys in the camp are given the task of digging a hole measuring five feet by five feet in the hot sun. This task is meant to be character building but Stanley soon realises that there is nother reason why the boys are digging holes.
Holes melds together three stories and three time periods - the story of Stanley as he copes with life at Camp Green Lake, the story relating to the curse supposedly placed upon his family and the story of Katherine Barlow (later known as Kissin' Kate Barlow') and Sam the onion seller who lived in the area when there was a Green Lake.
This is a story about the importance and power of friendship, the destructive nature of cruelty of various kinds, coincidence and fate as well as how events in history can affect lives. It is a tall story laced with humour about a young boy coping with the challenges fate has imposed upon him.
Originally published in 1998, Holes won the Newberry Medal in 1999 for the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children for that year.
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