stacy said...I really dug this book. Can't wait to box it up and send it to my niece.
Robin S. said...I LOVED this book. Loved. Had never read it before, but wow. It deserved to win awards.
stacy said...I loved it, too. I didn't think the originality was so much in the main character as in the story itself.
Evil Editor said...I thought it was very clever.
fairyhedgehog said...hi
stacy said...Fairyhedgehog won't be able to make it due to signal issues.
Dave F. said...I saw the movie years ago and read the book this past month. Nice story and so easy to read.
Evil Editor said...Is the movie good?
Robin S. said...I've never seen the movie.
Dave F. said...The movie is slightly different to accommodate the stars. For instance, the warden is more apparent because in the movie it's Sigourney Weaver and you don't write a small part for an actress of her caliber. She's true to the book but looms much larger. I liked the story when I first saw it in the movie. It is unusual or shall we say fantastical enough to interest a kid and warm enough for adults to enjoy.
stacy said...I haven't seen the movie yet, personally. I'm going to queue this on Netflix. But the scenes were so on fire I kept imagining how the story would work in a movie. I think the warden was a young version of my second-grade teacher. I always said she had the personality better suited for a prison warden. I loved Zero. Great character.
Robin S. said...What drew me in was the voice of the narrator. Funny and sweet and ironic without being over the top. I love the voice. The story came second, to me. Then I got into it.
stacy said...I also found the Girl Scouts references amusing.
Evil Editor said...It was nice that the connections between the present and past were left for the reader to figure out, rather than spelled out, as some authors would have done, thinking their young audience wouldn't get it.
stacy said...Yeah, I liked that, too, EE.
Robin S. said...Agree. This author believed in his readers.
Dave F. said...In the movie they are spelled out in a montage ending so the audience could see the connection between Madame Zeroni and the kids. But it doesn't intrude drastically into the tone and main story.
stacy said...There were moments of real suspense, too, like when Stanley runs away from Camp Green Lake, and his canteen is empty, empty, empty. Really loved that passage. I went back and read that a couple of times.
Dave F. said...I liked the relative non-threatening atmosphere. It takes being sent away from parents and made to work like a criminal (which should scare kids into nightmares) and makes it not-threatening but not inconsequential. A very nice tone of voice and very kid friendly.
stacy said...I thought it was a nice balance between being dark and humorous.
Robin S. said...Like The Graveyard Book, it seems to me Holes is one of the crossover novels that adults related to as well as the kids.
fairyhedgehog said...I'm mostly lurking because of connection problems. I did love the book.
stacy said...The nicknames the kids gave each other cracked me up.
Zachary Gole said...This was a very sad book, in some ways. Sure, everything worked out for a happy ending in the present day story, but the fates of some of the characters in the past were quite tragic. I'm not saying that as a negative. Books don't have to have completely happy endings, of course. Just wasn't expecting it, I guess.
Dave F. said...I never thought of this as heavy-hearted or sad. The movie ends more explicitly than the book... It reunites Zero with his Mother and Stanley's family use their foot odor fortune to help all the kids.
Robin S. said...As far as the sadness goes, especially in the background of the families, etc. - I think it's told in such a way as to 'manage' the sadness for the reader. And Stanley has to face down the curse demons to move on with his life - that's what every kid has to do, in a way. Dave, you mentioned the movie makes everything all tied up with a neat bow in the end. I don't love that, to be honest. Ex: the first Quiet American in the late 1950's refashioned much of what Graham Greene was trying to say, in order to be Hollywood enough. In 2002 the movie was remade to mirror Greene's actual vision, and was incredibly well done.
Dave F. said...Well Robin, Disney made the movie and did a spectacular job but true to Disney, it's all happy and warm and fuzzy and sweetness at the end. The spectacular part is the kids acting all through it. Disney (and the director) knew enough to keep the adult actors as supporting the kids. There are a lot of characters in this story.
Zachary Gole said...The book also reunited Zero with his mother, didn't it? At least, while I don't remember it explicitly saying so, I certainly assumed the woman singing to Zero at the end was his mother. (And that, though again I don't recall it explicitly saying this, that's presumably what Zero had hired the private investigator for, to find his mother.)
stacy said...I thought the book hinted that Zero was also reunited with his mother? There was a woman who was there at the end who recited the poem as she's watching Zero (sleep?). I got the impression that was Zero's mother.
Dave F. said...the book ending leaves that reunion to the reader. We smile and know she's his Mother. The movie, by the nature of the picture rather than the words actually has to show that reunion and not just point at it. It's the difference between words and pictures.
stacy said...I thought the book tied up things nicely for the main characters. I think that movies sometimes have to be more explicit just by the fact that they're things people are viewing. I want to see that version of the Quiet American. I've read the book.
Robin S. said...One of my very favorite chapters was the one with Onion Sam and Katherine, and the schoolhouse fixing, and the kiss in the rain. That was beautiful. To me, what Sachar is exquisitely good at is understating to make a powerful point.
Zachary Gole said...I liked some of the little character details, too, to give the characters their individual quirks and personalities. One that stood out for me was the Warden's rattlesnake venom nail polish. We only saw her using it once (and heard her threatening to use it once more), but that was enough to establish it as an interesting part of her character, and highlight her cruelty and deviousness. I thought that was an especially neat gimmick for a villainess of a children's book; frankly, it was an imaginative enough villainous character trait it would have been perfectly at home in a much more serious and darker-themed book, which made its use here particularly effective.
stacy said...That gave the story a bit of a darker tone.
fairyhedgehog said...I liked the voice, the way the curse made sense of the story, and how it all wove together. There were some very tense moments too that almost had me peeking at the ending.
Dave F. said...Sacher reveals only pertinent details we see them like a half-blurred photo -- only the important parts are clear and precise, the rest of the character is there but not there. That's the way our eyes really see the world.
Zachary Gole said...Yeah, normally I would be bothered by the fact that the story was driven by so many big coincidences. (That kind of drove me crazy about Jane Eyre.) But in this case, the background with the curse made sense of it all, because there was the implication that these might not really be just the result of chance, but of some sort of power of fate that links the characters together. That made the coincidences much easier to swallow.
Evil Editor said...I liked that we weren't told why the kids were being forced to dig holes at first. Was it just labor like crushing rocks on a chain gang? We're they digging graves for themselves?
Robin S. said...Agree, Dave, on the half-blurred photos idea! It comes together in pieces and it works so well that way. I believed in the beginning, EE, that the hole digging really was just about punishment, and it made my blood boil.
Zachary Gole said...EE -- Yeah, definitely, I think it's better to leave some mystery at first and only gradually reveal what's going on, and this book did a good job of that. First you just know they're digging holes, then you know the Warden wants to be brought anything interesting they find and you suspect there's some other purpose to it, then when Stanley finds a fossil and is told the Warden isn't interested in that you get the idea she's looking for something specific... much better to build it up gradually like that than if the book had just revealed at the outset what the Warden's real motive was.
Robin S. said...Agree absolutely, Zachary - it unfolds beautifully. And I like how the past is interwoven. Also, Sachar is really good with bringing the reader right into how characters are feeling. I have the last para in Chap 19 marked especially for that.
Dave F. said...The little kindness of teaching reading is returned in that Zero is the one reading the label on the suitcase they dug up. Such a nice subtle, detail of the story.
stacy said...Oh, yeah, I love that, Dave. I hadn't even thought about that.
Robin S. said...Dave, I hadn't thought about that, either. Thanks for that!
stacy said...What's interesting to me is that the author leaves the reader to decide what s/he believes. Is the story driving by destiny and fate? It is if you believe the curse. In that case, events aren't coincidental - they only seem so. Yet, you don't have to believe that to accept the logic of the story, I don't think. I wonder if "coincidence" in Jane Eyre is really just a different take on life from a different time. Back then, I think, people were much more open to the idea of fate as a driving force in our lives.
Robin S. said...I like it in this novel that the curse/fate holding Stanley back, because he can use it to blame everything that goes wrong in his life - that he has to beat that back in order to free himself, literally and figuratively. And I also liked the way the past, though not a curse, does travel down the years in this book to explain the present.
stacy said...I liked that, too, Robin. But I loved that you don't really know if it's the curse or just Stanley coming into his own.
Robin S. said...Yeah, I see what you mean, Stacy, about the curse. When I read about it, I kept thinking about a relative of mine, who, every time something went wrong, even something small, she'd mutter about how 'a person just can't win'. Of course, that doomed her.
stacy said...OMG, that's pretty much my extended family, right there.
Zachary Gole said...I thought the handling of Zero's character was well done, too. The Warden and her assistants were always going on about how he was too stupid to learn to read, for instance... and yet we saw that, even before he learned to read, Zero had exceptional mathematical skills, that the adults at the camp just hadn't bothered to notice. And again, this was presented with subtlety; the book never had the narrator explicitly point out that Zero's math skills implied he wasn't as stupid as the adults at the camp claimed. It just left this as another thing for the reader to put together.
Robin S. said...Agree, Zachary - it comes down to the writer trusting his readers. And being damn good. I read that Louis Sachar rewrites/does several edits, and I think it shows in the subtlety in this novel.
stacy said...I love it when characters break out of the mold that's been set for them in the story. I'm definitely going to be checking out Sachar's other work.
Evil Editor said...I saw a couple of his books in B & N a couple days ago, but not the sequel to Holes. Something called There's a Boy in the Girl's Bathroom...or vice versa.
No matter how young the books we do are intended for, we seem to like them if well done. Do I dare choose a kindergarten picture book?
stacy said...Well, EE, that might fit with the busy schedules we all seem to have! : ) I'm looking forward to the next couple of books in the queue, too. I got the Suspicions of Mr. Whicher for Christmas. Just have to order the Sweetness one. But I gotta say, this one was an excellent pick. I can't wait to send it on to my niece. Maybe I'll pick up a few other Newbery reads as well.
Dave F. said...Sacher makes almost no note of race. As the author, he simply places the facts at strategic points and lets the reader's mind do the work. It's a few chapters before he says anything about the race of the kids and it is very, very subtle when he reveals that Onion Man Sam is African American. There's a very powerful lesson in the book but it's not heralded or announced in neon.
stacy said...I have to wonder if that wasn't a publishing decision, though, Dave. It seems like every "mainstream" book I read that has minority characters, it's always "subtly done." It happened with Gaiman's ANANSI BOYS. You wouldn't know right away that the MC was black. And I have to wonder whether that's intentional so as not to scare readers off.
Dave F. said...I noticed it in the book more than the movie. We see the characters in the movie and Onion Man Sam was played by Dule Hill (an excellent actor) and Hector Zeroni by Khleo Thomas, (another excellent actor) ... But in the book, we are left to our own minds and Sachar waits for a number of pages, maybe even a chapter or two before he reveals race. It's built into the story but very quiet. If I was teaching this story to kids in a classroom, I would definitely teach about race. Back in Europe, the very exotic Madame Zeroni would be Romany or Gypsy mixed race. Europe looks down on the gypsies.
Zachary Gole said...Actually, I'd assumed at first Madame Zeroni was probably Romany, which is why it surprised me that Zero was black. (I'd figured out he was Madame Zeroni's descendant fairly early on.) But I guess it's entirely possible that Madame Zeroni's son had married a black woman, or something similar had happened further down the line, so Zero was mostly black but with some Romany blood.
Robin S. said...I was embarrassed that it took me so long to get from 'Zero' to 'Zeroni'. Seriously. I think I was just letting the story flow over me.
Zachary Gole said...Oh, another very interesting and subtle touch that just occurred to me -- a bit of ambiguity in the story I quite liked. When Mr. Sir, after withholding water from Stanley, finally fills his canteen... but does so in a suspicious way, so Stanley concludes he's put something in the water and doesn't drink it. We never find out just what Mr. Sir put into the canteen. We never actually find out for sure whether in fact he did put anything in the canteen -- for all we know, he just filled it the way he did to make Stanley nervous, and the water was perfectly fine and Stanley could have drunk it with no ill effect. I like that there were details like this that the story intentionally left unexplained, that it didn't assume the reader had to know everything.
stacy said...I thought that part was well-done, too, Zachary. I like how he didn't tie up every loose end. Definitely gives the reader pause.
Evil Editor said...Presumably Sylvia will arrive any minute, having miscalculated the time.
Sylvia said...Er, good morning? I had the time right but I dozed off and only just woke up. :/
