Holes

Holes

By Louis Sachar

Summary:

Stanley Yelnats IV (the fourth) is from a family of back luck. He is always in the wrong place, at the wrong time. When anything goes wrong, Stanley always blames his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather, the first Stanley Yelnats. He believes that he put a curse of bad luck on his family.

Stanley's family is poor and he is bullied everyday at school. He didn't like his life, but he just went with it.  But one day, when Stanley was walking home from school, a pair of red gym shoes hit him on the head, as if they had fallen from the sky. He was just underneath a bridge so somebody could have dropped them, but that seems unlikely to Stanley. Not knowing what to do Stanley took the shoes home, but before he knows it he is arrested for stealing the shoes. It turns out that they belonged to a famous athlete...

In court Stanley is given the choice of 18 months of jail, or 18 months at Camp Green Lake. Stanley had never been to camp before, so he chose Camp Green Lake.

But when the camp turns out to be a desert with no lake Stanley is confused, and when is new 'friends' names are X-Ray, Armpit, Zigzag, Magnet and Zero he is certain that Camp Green Lake is not a fun summer camp. Everyday Stanley and his new friends have to dig a hole 5 feet deep and 5 feet wide.

Nobody knows what they are looking for, but hole after hole Stanley starts to uncover a mystery that has been lying underneath Camp Green Lake for the past hundred years. It might even, just have something to do with the Yelnats' past as well...

Review:

I would like to start off my review of Holes by saying that I read it in Grade 3 and have already watched the movie many times (movie comparison and the end of the review). We were given Holes to read in English class this semester so I was really excited to reread it. I read it SUPER quickly this time though!

I think that Holes is a really good book that has many sides to it. It has a friendship side between Stanley and Zero (they become best friends) and we see how their friendship develops. Stanley has never had to dig holes before and his finds it really hard so, we get to read about what techniques he tries and how he finds it impossible to dig through the tough dirt. That shows a challenge side of the book. There is also the mystery side to the book...

I love all of the characters in the books, especially Stanley's friends at Camp Green Lake. They all have funny nicknames like Armpit and Magnet. It is also interesting to read about why all of the boys  at Camp Green Lake are there and what they did before they came to the camp. The boys make the book so much more fun to read because they are the strangest and weirdest characters in the book. They are always fooling around.

Like I mentioned at the beginning of the review it have watched the movie and wanted to do a short movie-book comparison. Here it is:

The movie is really well done and I think that is corresponds almost perfectly to the book, but there are moments in the movie when I think that maybe they could have made the scene a little longer or they could have added a couple of extra lines to make the view understand a little bit better.

Otherwise, everything is very well done: the clothes we worn exactly as they were mentioned in the book, and all of Stanley's friends looked exactly like the descriptions in the book. 

When you have a really good story, it's easy to make a really good movie. That is my conclusion.

P.S. I'm so sorry that I haven't gotten many reviews out this month. I had a very, very busy start to the school year, but now I'm back on track and you can expect a couple reviews next month!

Very, very, very strongly recommended to boys and girls ages 10-11+

It is a story that you will never forget...

233 pages

Dandelion Wine

Dandelion Wine

By Ray Bradbury

Summary:

It's 1928 and Douglas Spaulding is a 12 year old boy living in a big house, with his big family, in Illinois. It's summer and Douglas is excited. All he wants this summer, is a summer full of running around on freshly cut grass, a summer of wearing-in new tennis shoes, devouring delicious ice cream and dandelion wine making. Douglas Spaulding's favorite summer activity is dandelion wine making. He loves blending dandelions with other tasty fruits, adding the water, mixing it, beating it and pouring the result into bottles.

But this summer, Douglas wants to do more than sitting around his yard beating dandelions and making dandelion wine. He and his younger brother Tom want to leave their big house, packed to the roof with grandparents and cousins. They want to have adventures. They want to explore, to discover everything the world has to offer, but most importantly, they want to have an interesting and adventure-filled summer.

When the adventures begin Douglas and Tom soon realize that there are bigger mysteries in the world that they are not yet ready to take on -- they have a lot of life skills to learn in the summer of 1928.

Review:

When I first started reading Dandelion Wine I found it boring. After reading the back cover I was expecting tons of adventures and excitement. The book is filled with adventures and excitement, but I didn't understand this until the end of the book.  Dandelion Wine is not like the books I usually read (it was a school assignment).  It is not a modern-day book or a historical book; the story takes place about 80 years ago.

As we read the first couple of pages of the book we meet some of Douglas's family who all live in the same house as him. All of the Spauldings live in his house; grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters and more. It was a fun little introduction but after a couple of chapters of 'Grandpa dropped that...' and 'Tom did this...' it gets a to be a bit boring and it seems like the story isn't really starting.

After the first couple of chapters we learn that Douglas wants to experience "everything in the entire world" in summer of 1928, and how he wants his life to be a big adventure which will begin that summer.

As the book progresses, we meet some of Douglas and Tom's friends. All of the boys play together, and that is an interesting topic to read about (I find).  It turned out to be a very interesting way to learn about a boy's life in 1928. We read about what sports they played, what sweets (candy) they ate and what they wore. When you think about it, you probably don't really know what a group of 12 year old boys growing up in 1928 would do in summer. It is an uncommon topic, but, let's say, an educational topic.

However the 'story' never seems to start. But it does. You just don't realize it until the end of the book. The book isn't exactly a story with adventure, it is, as I like to call it, a 'thinking' story.  It is a book that makes you think and you don't realize it until the end.  This is a story of a young boy learning, but as it develops in your mind, you are learning as well. This book makes you think about your life and everything that you have already learnt or that are in the middle of learning.

I would recommend Dandelion Wine to any tween ready to learn.

Note: There is a sequel to this book which was written in 2006 (almost 50 years later).  It is called Farewell Summer and follows Douglas in the summer of 1929.

Ages 12+

239 pages