This month's Kitchen Table pick is Holes by Louis Sachar, read together over a couple of weeks, with a question at each stop. Page count pending. Three stories a hundred years apart that click together in the last fifty pages.
August 2026 pick. Last updated 19 August 2026.
Why this one
It is a puzzle box that plays fair, and kids love being ahead of the adult in the room. It is also quietly about injustice: who gets punished, who gets believed, and what a family curse is actually made of. The talk after it goes further than you expect.
Nothing in this book is a coincidence, and a nine-year-old works that out about ten pages before you do.
Tonight's question
Stanley is punished for something he did not do. When is that worth arguing about, and when do you just dig?
Open the kid's page in big type
The pace planner
Work out when you finish
Set your start date and your honest nightly minutes. It saves in this browser only.
- Per night
- 12 pages
- Per week
- 84 pages
- You finish
- Saturday, October 1025 nights, about 4 weeks
We have not verified a page count for this edition, so the planner starts from your own copy. Change the number to match the book in your hand.
How long will it take at twenty minutes a night?
Page count pending for the edition we link, so we are not guessing the number of nights. at a modest pace, and the sheet's first question never depends on the ending. The twenty minutes a night system.
The discussion sheet
Dad's Book Club
Discussion sheet
Holes by Louis Sachar
The Kitchen Table. August 2026.
If you only ask one
Stanley is punished for something he did not do. When is that worth arguing about, and when do you just dig?
- Part one, arriving at camp. The warden says digging builds character. Does hard work build character, or does it just make you tired?
- Part one, the first hole. Stanley is the only one who tells the truth about the shoes. What did the truth get him?
- Part two, the boys' nicknames. Everyone at camp is called something other than their name. What does a nickname do to a person?
- Part two, Zero. Stanley teaches Zero to read and gets in trouble for it. Was it worth it?
- Part two, Kate Barlow's story. The town punishes her for who she loved. What does the book want you to see there?
- Part three, the mountain. Stanley carries Zero uphill. Where does he find that, after a hundred holes?
- Part three, the payoff. Which detail surprised you most when it turned out to matter?
- The curse is really a promise that was broken. What does the book say about fixing something your family did before you were born?
- If you had to name the real villain of this book, who would you pick? It is not as obvious as it looks.
dadsbookclub.com · August 2026
If you liked this
The Things They Carried
Tim O'Brien · The Shelf
The same month on the shelf, sized for you. Linked stories about what men haul around, and about the difference between what happened and what is true.
What to read after it
Small Steps by Louis Sachar
For the kid who wanted to know what happened to Armpit.
Frindle by Andrew Clements
For the kid who liked the cleverness more than the desert.
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