Holes was the winner of the 1998 Newbery Award.  Stanley Yelnats is sent to a hellish correctional camp in the Texas desert for a crime he didn't commit. There the boys must dig a deep hole every day. At the prison Stanley finds his real best friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself.                

Sachar says he got the idea for Holes when he moved to Austin, Texas. It was so hot in Texas that he decided to write a story about suffering in the heat. It took Sachar eighteen months to write Holes, the same amount of time that Stanley was sentenced to prison.