#CanLit Choices: "Holes" alternatives

Holes

by Louis Sachar

Yearling

978-0440414803

272 pp.

Ages 9-12

RL 5.2

1999

Holes, the multiple award-winning book by American author, Louis Sachar, is the story of Stanley Yelnats who is sent to a juvenile correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds him digging holes.  Of course, he is not surprised by this turn of events as his family has been cursed ever since his "no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather" failed to keep a promise.

Written at RL 5.2 (this means a child should be able to read this at the second month of Grade 5), Holes is often used to demonstrate the following themes:

• fate
• friendship
• justice
• determination

Of course, Louis Sachar's sense of humour and surprise twists are also very engrossing.

                                                                                            

The following youngCanLit books focus on fate and justice and would serve well as updated and alternative novels to Louis Sachar's Holes. And, for those fans of Holes who might like a Canadian alternative, these novels have the twists, turns and laughs that have made Holes such a popular book.

Banjo of Destiny

by Cary Fagan 

Illustrated by Selçuk Demirel 

Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press

127 pp.

Ages 9-12

2011

Courtesy of his parents' dental floss fortune, Jeremiah Birnbaum has the very best of everything that money can buy, including the lessons and education to turn him into a fine young man.  But Jeremiah falls in love with the music of the banjo, and that does not fit in with his parents' plan.

Book Club Questions for Banjo of Destiny

Jolted: Newton Starker's Rules for Survival

by Arthur Slade

HarperCollins

224 pp.

Ages 11-14

2008

Newton Starker has just lost his mother to a lightning strike, the same tragedy that has cursed all his relatives on his mother's side. Armed with his six rules for survival, his trusty truffle-seeking pig, a desire to out-manoeuvre his nemesis Violet Quan, and the will to live, fourteen-year-old Newton, a student at the Jerry Potts Academy of Higher Learning and Survival in Moose Jaw, wonders whether he'll be the one to outlive the curse.

Podcast: Audio and Video of Arthur Slade's reading of Jolted 

The Midnight Curse

by L.M. Falcone

Kids Can Press

208 pp.

Ages 10-13

2010

When their great-great-uncle Jonathan dies, eleven-year-old fraternal twins, Charlie and Lacey Darcy, and their mom are summoned to England, hopeful for an inheritance.  But, it is a curse that transfers from Uncle Jonathan to Charlie, already a nervous worrier, which condemns him to a life sleeping in water from midnight to daybreak, or suffer death.

Book trailer can be viewed at my CanLit for LittleCanadians Book Trailers site here.

Neil Flambé and the Crusader's Curse

by Kevin Sylvester

Simon & Schuster Books for Young People

291 pp.

Ages 8-14

2012

Neil Flambé, teen chef and Vancouver restauranteer extraordinaire, does not that know that the great Flambé chefs have been cursed since the 1200's.  He does know, however, that his dishes now taste like sawdust, the re-opening of the restaurant is doomed (especially after closed by the health inspector) and he's challenged by computer wiz and rival, Stanley Picón, with computer Deep Blue Cheese (DBC), to a cooking duel.  It's a very unsavory situation for Neil.

Activity sheets and a How To Draw Neil Flambé video are available at the Simon & Schuster website

Dunces Anonymous

by Kate Jaimet

Orca Book Publishers
157 pp.
Ages 9-12
2009

Josh is sure to win Class President, but it's his mother that wants it for me, not Josh. To find some help with his dilemma, Josh forms a club, Dunces Anonymous, for students whose parents push them to excel at activities they are not interested in. Two students join him:  Wang, whose father is chess tournament crazy, loves fencing, and Magnolia, who likes to act, does not want to be in the school play, Romeo and Juliet.

In each of the above books, the protagonist must deal with a destiny/fate/curse that is none of his doing, and must look towards his friends and show real determination to ensure that the resolution is more to his liking.  What else does a book alternative to Holes need?  Absolutely nothing!

Leave comments if you have any other suggestions for Holes alternatives or to select an age-old novel that needs refreshing with #CanLitChoices.

Neil Flambé and the Crusader's Curse: Book Launch

The first of the Neil Flambé Capers

 won the 2011 Silver Birch Fiction award.

The second is nominated for 

a 2012 Silver Birch Fiction award

 and just won the District School Board 

of Niagara's own Silver Birch award.

Want to check out the newest, just released Neil Flambé Caper?

Join 

author and illustrator Kevin Sylvester 

on Saturday, May 12, 2012 

from 10:00 to 12:00 pm

at the Northern District Library

40 Orchard View Blvd. 

(one block north of Yonge and Eglinton)

Toronto

for the launch of  

Neil Flambé and the Crusader's Curse

Kevin Sylvester will talk with young readers and sign copies of his new book.

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Learn How to Draw Neil Flambé

While waiting for your chance to see Kevin Sylvester, check out this wonderful video that teaches you how to draw Neil Flambé.

 

Uploaded by  SimonSchusterCanada on March 19, 2012 

to YouTube

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Still MORE Neil Flambé!

Kevin Sylvester and his publisher, Simon & Schuster, 

have a great promotion called 

Take Neil Flambé into the wild!

 

Print out your own Flat Neil Flambé, 

cut him out, take him somewhere and photograph him.  

Then send your photo to audrey@simonandschuster.ca 

to add your photo to Neil's photo album!

See where others have taken Neil Flambé into the Wild already. Kevin Sylvester even took Neil to China on a recent trip. 

Neil Flambé and the Crusader's Curse

Written and illustrated by Kevin Sylvester

Simon & Schuster Books for Young People

978-1-44244-408-9

291 pp.

Ages 8-14

2012

It's not easy to empathize with Neil Flambé, teen chef and Vancouver restaurateur: he's precocious, arrogant and haughty.  How he ever got his cousin, Larry, to partner with him in the restaurant business or young perfumier Isabella Tortellini to become enamoured with him is beyond comprehension.  But, when his culinary skills and his extraordinary sense of smell (he is called The Nose, after all) seem to fail him, especially when hosting a group of food critics who send back their food or get food poisoning, those around him begin to worry.  After the setbacks Kevin Sylvester documented in Neil Flambé and the Marco Polo Murders (Key Porter, 2010) and Neil Flambé and the Aztec Abduction (Key Porter, 2011), Neil has had to refurbish Chez Flambé with new appliances, cutlery, furniture, heating/cooling, etc.  He should be in culinary nirvana, amazing everyone with his gifts, but now, on his fifteenth birthday, he's apprehensive and confused.  Something is very wrong.

Of course, the reader is privy to a series of historical episodes, starting in the 1200's, in which an ancestral Flambé chef (seems they were always great chefs) is prohibited from cooking but continues to create dishes using unlikely ingredients (e.g., seagull, tree bark, narwhal) and recording the recipes in a notebook of parchment.  History shows that, through time, many Flambés have been cursed.

Of course, the Nose knows no curse.  All he knows is that his glorious dishes now taste worse than sawdust and the restaurant's re-opening is doomed to fail.  Then Neil's life seems to flip out of the proverbial frying pan and into the fire: the safe with his recipes is stolen; a new restaurant, Carrion, is slated to open across the street; Greta Carbo from the Health Department shuts the restaurant down; and computer wiz and rival, Stanley Picón, with computer Deep Blue Cheese (DBC) challenges Neil to a cooking duel.  Luckily, Neil does have allies: Larry, Isabella, her bodyguard Jones, his mentor Angel Jícama, food critic Jean-Claude Chili, and police inspector Sean Nakamura.  With some clever sleuthing, innovative gastronomy, a little travel and even some charity, Neil and his associates discover a plot cooked up to flambé his reputation and his restaurant.

Kevin Sylvester has created a winning character in Neil Flambé. (Speaking of winning, did you know Neil Flambé and the Marco Polo Murders won the 2011 Silver Birch Fiction Award and Neil Flambé and the Aztec Abduction is nominated for the 2012 Silver Birch Fiction Award?) Of course, Neil is not necessarily likeable (his arrogance tends to rule his personality) but he is growing up and learning to get along better with people (hence his proliferating entourage).  All Kevin Sylvester's characters are quirky and rich with life, even those who only appear in a single caper.  There are no two-dimensional stereotypical players in these plots.  In fact, the plots which may seem directional (i.e., problem to solution) are quite rich, teeming with red herrings and subplots and sub-subplots, perfect for a younger reading audience.  What will always endear the Neil Flambé Capers to readers, as it does here, is the nutty humour of the narrator and the characters.  It is often so subtle,  just a play on words (e.g., "..humming now, a little ditty DBC liked to call 'Happiness Is a Warm Bun - an Ode to John Lemon.'"; pg. 63), that I wondered if all readers "get" it.  But, if you check out some of the book trailers made by enthusiastic young readers of the Neil Flambé Capers and attend a Festival of Trees™ celebration with thousands of cheering readers, you'll know that they "get" it and they love it.  We all do.