Holes by Louis Sachar

A group of children have been reading and studying the great children’s novel, ‘Holes’ by Louis Sachar. Today, they were treated to a fabulous workshop delivered by Allan from Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse theatre where they discussed the plot, characters and setting of the story. 

Did you know Louis Sachar has written 33 books? In this story, the main character is called Stanley and little did we know that the author couldn’t think of a surname for him, so just wrote his first name backwards and created Stanley Yelnats IV.  Another fun fact we found out is this book took Louis Sachar 18 months to write – the same amount of time that Stanley was sentenced to stay at Camp Green Lake!

After finding out about the author and the origins of the story, the children got to experiment with some role play and drama.  They learnt how to create different characters by working on accents, body language and setting the scene. It was a lot of fun and they finished the workshop by putting themselves in two of the main characters shoes and thinking about their lives at Camp Green Lake.  The children fully engaged with the workshop and developed their understanding of the story, characters and what it would be like if they were sent to Camp Green Lake. 

This workshop was an excellent way to enrich our experience of the story and will be followed by a very special trip to the theatre in March to watch the live performance of the play. We can’t wait!