By now you will probably be wondering just how many children's books I have on my shelves that I haven't got round to reading. The answer is a truly shameful amount. After all, it's one thing to keep putting off “Ulyses” or “Gravity's Rainbow” and quite another thing to put off reading Shadowmancer or Lyrial. I haven't even finished the Harry Potter books; I got in huff after the fifth one was so long and so very rubbish... Anyway...
Stanley Yelnats is the fat kid at school who nobody likes, then his life gets a lot worse when he is falsely convicted of stealing and gets sent to Camp Green Lake. The camp is in a dried up lake bed in the desert, which saves the warden the bother of having guards and fences; any boy who runs away will be dead in 3 days. It is also plagued by yellow spotted lizards with a deadly bite. In ths setting the junior convicts must each dig a hole five feet deep and five feet across every day, on the grounds that this will build character. However, anything found in the holes must be shown to the warden – what is she looking for?
The back cover of my book describes it as a detective story, but I think it's more like a fairy story. And the warden ( a five-star psycho-bitch who paints her nails with rattlesnake venom) makes a brilliant wicked queen.
Holes is well-writen and easy going, but if even tht is too much bother, there's a film with Sigorney Weaver in the role of the warden.
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