Stanley Yelnats' Survival Guide to Camp Green Lake by Louis Sachar

2003 saw the publication of Stanley Yelnats' Survival Guide to Camp Green Lake, a self-help book detailing all the knowledge necessary for the reader to get by as an inmate of the camp, including the proper way to dig a hole and what to do if you're bitten by a rattlesnake. In fact, the book is so popular that author Louis Sachar went on to write two more books set in the world of Camp Green Lake. Along the way we get buried treasure, deadly venomous lizards, an outlaw named Kissin' Kate Barlow, and some really stinky sneakers.īut don't just take our word for it: Holes spent more than 150 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List ( source). We follow Stanley as he enters a juvenile detention facility called Camp Green Lake, and we watch as he goes from dull to dynamite, overcoming all kinds of seemingly insurmountable obstacles in his path. The book tells the tale of Stanley Yelnats, a mousy kid whose family is suffering a curse put on them over a hundred years ago by a one-legged gypsy woman. (Shmoop knows that not every book that the critics love is necessarily, um, loveable.) Good news, though: Holes is one terrific story. Not too shabby.Īll these fancy book awards, of course, wouldn't amount to squat in our book if Holes weren't also a great read. Hailed by critics as 'dazzling,' 'heartrending,' and 'wildly inventive,' it went on to win a whole slew of children's book prizes, including the Newbery Medal, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, and the National Book Award for Young People's Literature.

Published in 1999, Louis Sachar's Holes almost immediately became the talk of the town – well, the librarians' and children's book experts' town, that is. But once you're done, it's so stinkin' satisfying and you just can't believe that it all came together so neatly at the end. Reading Holesis kind of like putting together one of those giant jigsaw puzzles: there are a zillion little pieces, and you really have no clue how they're all going to fit together.

Stanley Yelnats' Survival Guide to Camp Green Lake by Louis Sachar