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Gr 4 - 7 -Stanley Yelnats is an unusual hero-dogged by bad luck stemming from an ancient family curse, overweight, and unlikely to stick up for himself when challenged by the class bully. Perpetually in the wrong place at the wrong time, Stanley is unfairly sentenced to months of detention at Camp Green Lake (a gross misnomer if ever there was one! ) where he's forced to dig one hole in the rock-hard desert soil every day. The hole must be exactly five feet in diameter, the distance from the tip of his shovel to the top of the wooden handle. Each boy is compelled to dig until his hole is completed, no matter how long it takes. According to the warden the digging "builds character. " Stanley soon begins to question why the warden is so interested in anything "special" the boys find.
How Stanley rescues his friend Zero, who really stole Sweet Feet's tennis shoes, what the warden is desperately looking for, and how the Yelnats curse is broken all blend magically together in a unique coming of age story leavened with a healthy dose of humor. One person and one person only is responsible for Stanley Yelnats going to Camp Green Lake -- a juvenile detention center for boys -- Stanley Yelnats. Or at least that's what the camp counselor tells him. But Stanley, accused of stealing the used sneakers of baseball great Clyde Livingston, is innocent. He knows that his being at the camp is just part of the curse that has plagued his family for generations.
His bad luck is the fault of his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-gran dither. But that's another story. And so Stanley begins his routine at the camp. Along with the other boys in the D tent -- Zero, X-Ray, Armpit, Squid, Magnet, and Zigzag -- Stanley gets up every day before dawn to dig a hole the desert that's five feet in every direction. Though the digging is supposed to be a character-building exercise, the counselors let the boys know that the Warden wants to be alerted if anyone digs up anything "interesting. " A fossil Stanley (by then known as Caveman) finds doesn't qualify, but a gold-colored tube with the initials KB does. With each hole he digs, Stanley comes closer to the truth that KB stands for Kissin' Kate Barlow, a schoolteacher whose forbidden love for an onion seller turned her into a notorious outlaw who roamed the area back when there was a lake in Green Lake.
And that story about Stanley's no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-gran dither? It might not be a different story after all. Bibliography:
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Research essay sample on Bad Luck Five Feet
