Holes — Chapter 16

About This Passage

This passage is a small window into the kind of boy Stanley Yelnats is. In the middle of a hot, exhausting day of digging, he is quietly running a mystery through his mind — trying to match the letters 'K B' to famous authors he has heard of. Notice that the authors he names are Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, and Mark Twain: the classics he has been taught in school. Stanley is not a genius and not a detective, but he is a reader and a thinker, and he is using the knowledge he has to puzzle out a clue the Warden cannot solve. Copying this passage invites the student to notice how an author reveals a character's intelligence not through grand statements but through the small, honest workings of his mind.

Narration Prompt

Retell Chapter 16 in your own words. Begin with Stanley returning to the Wreck Room and noticing how X-Ray is loud while everyone else is collapsed on broken furniture. Move through the next day's digging with wheelbarrows, the Warden's growing impatience at lunch, Mr. Sir forcing the boys to work faster, and Stanley's thoughts about sneaking out to dig at night. End with the letter from Stanley's mother and the quiet moment when Zero admits he has never heard the nursery rhyme about the lady in the shoe.

Discussion Questions

1. What in the story tells you that Stanley is trying to solve the mystery of the letters K B on the gold tube — even while he is supposed to be working in the hot sun? What kinds of books and authors does his mind reach for, and what does this tell you about the kind of boy Stanley is?
2. What in the story tells you that the Warden controls not just the boys but her own officers — Mr. Pendanski and Mr. Sir? Look carefully at what the Warden says to Mr. Sir at lunch, and what happens afterward.

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide