Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I read Holes tonight after my fourth grader brought it home from school today. She had described a little bit of the plot this week and I was appalled by what she was describing. After reading the book myself, I am even more horrified that our school has used this book as a 'reading' book that the whole class did together. I came online to find out what others thought about the book and I kept finding words such as 'humerous' and 'comedic'. Somehow, I missed the humor in the descriptions of anti-social behavior in most of the characters. In addition, the violence really bothered me. When the Warden purposefully paints her nails with snake venom and slaps and scratches Mr. Sir, and then calmly watches as he writhes in agony...when Mr. Sir, in turn, smashes a teen's head up against an oatmeal pot and chokes him when the teen dares to notice his mutilated face...when Mr. Sir pours out Stanleys water, when Stanley is significantly dehydrated, in reprisal for seeing Mr. Sir's humiliation with the Warden...the Warden stabs Armpit with a pitchfork and 3 holes and blood appear on his shirt as he falls into a hole up to 5 feet deep...Sam's murder...Kiss me Kate shooting the sheriff, and in a macabre fashion, kissing him with red lipstick freshly applied to her lips...Kate Barlow's black and blistered feet as she was forced to continue walking or she would get whacked with the shovel...the shooting of Mary Lou...Zigzag provoking and beating up Stanley...Zigzag smashing Stanley in the head with a shovel. This is, by no means, a complete inventory. Now on to the ugly relationship dynamics...The abusive, traumatic dynamics between the adults in the book and the teens...and between the teens and each other. The message that adults are ignorant & unprotective (Stanley's parents), abandoning (Zero's Mom), or overtly abusive (Warden, Mr. Sir), or, if you dare trust them as one might want to do with Mr. Pendanski, they will just turn around and betray you as he did at the end (he was one of the most ruthless adults in the end). There are too many other well-written books out there to settle for this kind of traumatic read. Just because a book is "well-written" does not make it a worthwhile to read. I will be going in for a parent-teacher conference tomorrow and I will be sharing my perceptions of this book with the teacher.