20 Years in Print
Winner of the National Book Award
"Dazzling" -Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Heartrending" -The Horn Book, starred review
"Brilliant" -School Library Journal, starred review
"Engrossing" -Kirkus Reviews
"A joyful, eerie tour de force" -The Boston Sunday Globe
"Wildly inventive" -The New York Times Book Review
Stanley Yelnats''s family has a history of bad luck, so he isn''t too surprised when a miscarriage of justice sends him to a boys'' juvenile detention center, Camp Green Lake. But there is no lake-it has been dry for over a hundred years-and it''s hardly a camp: as punishment, the boys must each dig a hole a day, five feet deep, five feet across, in the hard earth of the dried-up lake bed. The warden claims that this pointless labor builds character, but that''s a lie. Stanley must try to dig up the truth.
In this wonderfully inventive, compelling novel that is both serious and funny, Louis Sachar weaves a narrative puzzle that tangles and untangles, until it becomes clear that the hand of fate has been at work in the lives of the characters-and their forebears-for generations. It is a darkly humorous tale of crime, punishment, and redemption.
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