Holes

Holes, by Louis Sachar, has 233 pages filled with drama and excitement.
The book starts off with Stanley Yelnats and him walking down a street along
an underpass, pefectly unsuspicious of anything. Stanley and his family,
unfortunately, are on the more poor side, so when he gets hit in the head with
a pair of shoes worn and signed by a famous athlete he begins running as
fast as he could home to show his mother and father the fortune he had just
found. While darting down the underpass the police see him with the shoes
(which were stolen) and take him away. Stanley has a choice, he could have
either gone to jail or Camp Green Lake. As we all probably already know, he
chose the second one.

Stanley definately perseveres through his time at Camp Green Lake and
all of the bad things he has to put up with. Facing the warden, facing Mr Sir,
and the harrassment from all of the other "campers". Especially when his only
true friend at Camp Green Lake, Zero (Hector Zeroni), runs away.
He has to trudge through the sizzling hot desert to find him, which he finally
does. I connected this book to my experience at 6th grade camp because
towards the end I was feeling kind of tired and homesick. I thought the book
was terrific, though I wouldn't recommend it for young children because it has
some violence in it.

Criss Cross

The novel, Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins, has 337
pages telling the story of some kids' lives. The kids' names
are Hector, Debbie, Phil, Rowanne, Lenny, and Patty. It
also tells about the challenges the children have to
overcome during the time period of their lives. All of the
kids share the same character traits; they are all caring and
adventurous.
Adventurous and caring describe the kids' personalities.
Debbie and her friend, Peter, are both caring when Peter's
grandmother needs to go to the hospital, they find a way to
get her there, even though they have to put an effort into
looking for a way. They are also adventurous when Debbie
needs to remember how to start a car with a dead battery
and she needs to drive (without her permit) Peter's
grandmother to the hospital. Lenny is adventurous when he
teaching Debbie how to drive without his dad's permission,
when it is his dad's car.Hector is also adventurous when he
decides to take guitar lessons when no one else will. I
connected this story to myself and my friends because we
will do just about anything for each other. I would
recommend this book, I thought it was very well written!