Newbery Medal winner Sachar proves ability in darker ‘Holes’

HOLES, by Louis Sachar, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 233 pages, hardback, $16.

A few years ago, the Little family underwent Wayside School mania. Whenever we traveled, we brought along the audiotape of “Sideways Stories from Wayside School.” In these wacky accounts of a high-rise elementary school, nothing is quite normal. Example: In order to demonstrate gravity, a teacher pushed a brand-new computer out the window. The book provoked peals of laughter in the car, from children and adults alike, even at the umpteenth listening.

Had I been asked at the time whether Wayside’s author, Louis Sachar, would ever win the Newbery Medal, the most prestigious award given for children’s literature, there would have been more laughing. The school stories are entertaining, like Gary Paulsen’s comic Dunc and Amos series, but nowhere near what one might call literature with a capital L.

Well, like Paulsen, Sachar has proved himself capable of pushing his talents as a writer to new heights. His latest, “Holes,” which won the 1998 Newbery, given by the American Library Association, puts him in another camp altogether, a place for serious consideration. The book also won the National Book Award for young people’s literature in November 1998 and a Christopher Award last month — quite the recognition.

While retaining the twisted absurdity of the Wayside tales, “Holes” edges into darker territory, surreal and existentialist. The palindromic-named Stanley Yelnats, the hero, is found guilty of a crime he did not commit — stealing a pair of sneakers — in some nameless Texan city (perhaps the author’s home base, Austin). The court packs him off to Camp Green Lake, the state’s largest body of water, which happens to be dry. There, in a prisonlike setting he joins a group of inner-city youth who are forced daily to dig a 5-foot-deep, 5-foot-wide hole.

This mindless yet backbreaking task, recalling the labor of that existentialist poster child Sisyphus, is supposed to build character, but as we come to find out, the camp’s director, a woman known as “The Warden,” believes there is treasure buried in the lake bottom. She drives her unwilling recruits to find it, with the help of a clutch of odd counselors, including one named Mr. Sir.

Stanley befriends a fellow inmate, Hector Zeroni, nicknamed Zero, who helps his obese friend dig his holes in exchange for reading lessons. When Zero flees camp, heading across the desertlike lake, Stanley goes after him. Their survival and eventual return make for wholly engaging reading.

Sachar weaves history into the narrative in a clever manner. Tales of Latvian forebears, family curses, flashbacks and the like provide the foundation for the present-tense action. If at times plot resolutions seem somewhat contrived (notably the after-the-fact explanation as to why the deadly yellow-spotted lizards don’t bother Stanley and Zero), the author’s sense of place, character and conflict save the day.

About his approach to writing, Sachar was once quoted as saying, “I never write down to kids,” a statement that recalls the sentiments of a Newbery award-winner from the 1930s, Rachel Field, who summered in the Cranberry Isles. The first woman ever to win the medal (for “Hitty”), Field criticized writers who wrote down to children, “with words so simplified that all the spirit is lost in commonplaces.”

Sachar’s prose style is very simple, but the commonplaces lend themselves to the spirit of the narrative. This reviewer was reminded of Jerzy Kozinski’s novel of World War II, “The Painted Bird,” another story of survival against all odds told in chiseled sentences.

Despite its bleak vision, “Holes” remains upbeat. Sachar’s young protagonists, to borrow from Faulkner, not only endure, they prevail. As if to underscore this positive vision, the lines of a lullaby recur through the book like a leitmotif in a piece of classical music.

With “Holes,” Sachar has gone from entertainment to enlightenment — without losing the absurdist sensibility that marked his earlier writings (which include “There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom,” 1987). Can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.