Holes by Louis Sachar's is a cool book. Stanley Yelnats is an unusual hero-dogged by bad luck coming from an ancient family curse. He is overweight, and unlikely to stick up for himself when challenged by the class bully; even though he is a really big kid for his age. He was in the wrong place, at the wrong time when a stolen pair of shoes lands on him after being thrown over an over pass. Stanley later realizes they are Clyde Livingston shoes, the famous baseball player. Stanley is unfairly sentenced to months of detention at Camp Green Lake in Texas, where he's forced to dig one hole in the rock-hard desert soil every day. The hole must be exactly five feet in diameter, the distance from the tip of his shovel to the top of the wooden handle. Each boy is forced to dig until his hole is completed, no matter how long it takes. Stanley soon begins to question why the warden is so interested in anything "special" the boys find. According to the warden the digging "builds character" but she has something else in mind. At the camp, Stanley meets Zero, the boy that committed the boy that committed the crime that Stanley was blamed for, for this was a fortunate event for Stanley becuase it allowed him to break the ancient curse that was bringing him bad luck. the boy that committed the crime that Stanley was blamed for. But their ancestors had met before more than a 100 yeas ago lake. A curse was set on Stanley's hole family because the ancestor disobeyed Zero's ancestor. The curse was that Stanley's family would get bad luck but the they broke it by doing what Zero's ancestor asked Stanley's ancestor to do. Then Stanley finally found out that Kate Barlow, a famous robber had buried her treasure on the lake.and that is what the warden had looked for the whole time. Stanley was freed and his horrible curse was broken. I liked how the author combined 3 stories in to one by telling about the past and present.