- Narration: Kerry Beyer narrates; the five posted reviews stay silent on the reading, focused instead on the story and the film.
- Themes: family curse, juvenile detention, buried secrets
- Mood: Wry and quietly dark, with real warmth underneath
- Verdict: A safe, short pick for family listening, though the anniversary bonus content mainly rewards returning fans.
Holes has been assigned in classrooms, handed down between siblings, and adapted into a movie kids still quote, so when this anniversary edition of the audiobook landed on my list, I mostly wanted to know what the extras added rather than whether the story itself still works. It does, and the packaging around it turns out to matter more than I expected.
Holes Exactly Five Feet Wide and Five Feet Deep
This is the special anniversary edition of Louis Sachar's Newbery Medal and National Book Award winner, narrated by Kerry Beyer and running 4 hours and 37 minutes on Listening Library. Stanley Yelnats is under a curse that traces back to his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather, and it lands him at Camp Green Lake, a boys' detention facility where the daily assignment is digging holes exactly five feet wide and five feet deep. Camp Green Lake has no lake, but it does have an awful lot of holes, and it does not take Stanley long to figure out the warden is not building character so much as searching for something buried under the dried-up lakebed.
What this edition adds beyond the novel itself is the interesting part: a new note from the author and an essay called Ten Things You May Not Know About Holes, both credited to Sachar. For a book this widely read, that kind of behind-the-curtain material is a real draw for returning fans, even if it means less new plot and more context around a story most listeners already have some relationship with.
Sachar braids Stanley's present-day ordeal at Camp Green Lake with a second thread running back through his family history in a mystery structure that does more work than the setup first lets on, and the payoff depends on both timelines clicking into place by the end. That kind of layered plotting is unusual for a book this short and squarely aimed at middle-grade readers, which helps explain why the story gets cited as a classroom staple rather than just a fun way to pass an afternoon.
71 Years Old, Meeting Stanley for the First Time
Five reviews sit on this listing and skew enthusiastic, four of them landing at a perfect five stars, consistently praising the same things: a clever, twist-heavy plot, humor that lands with kids, and themes of friendship, fairness, and courage that reviewers say stick with young readers well past the last page. One reviewer, addressing the author directly as Mr. Sachar, called it probably the best book they had ever read, at 71 years old and encountering Stanley's story for the first time, and speculated about the generations of middle schoolers who picked up values like loyalty and responsibility from it. That is a strong response from an adult reader coming to a middle-grade book cold, and it says something about how well the mystery and the character work hold up outside the age bracket it was written for.
At 4 hours and 37 minutes, this is also a manageable length for a family listen, short enough to get through over a handful of car rides or a couple of evenings, which matters if you are choosing something to share with a kid rather than queuing up a solo listen. The anniversary bonus content extends that a little further without padding out the core story, so returning listeners get something new without waiting through a bloated re-release.
It also helps that the book earns its acclaim on more than nostalgia. Between the Newbery Medal, the National Book Award, and its standing as a New York Times bestseller, Holes has the kind of institutional reputation that can sometimes feel disconnected from whether a book is actually a good listen decades later. The reviewer response here suggests it has aged well, with the strongest praise coming not from people revisiting a childhood favorite but from readers encountering Stanley's story for the first time as adults.
Five Reviews Never Mention Kerry Beyer's Narration
Here is the gap worth naming plainly: not one word about Kerry Beyer's narration or the audio production shows up anywhere in the five reviews attached here. Several of them read like they were written about the print book or the 2003 film rather than this specific audiobook. One reviewer explicitly compares the story to having watched the movie countless times and notes the film follows the book fairly closely, which is a useful data point if you have seen the adaptation and are wondering how faithful it is, but it tells you nothing about how the audio edition sounds. Another describes reading the book aloud with a son, which suggests a print copy rather than headphones. If narration quality is what will make or break this purchase for you, this listing simply does not give you that information yet.
One more mixed note is worth flagging: one reviewer, reading Holes with two boys aged 12 and 13, found it a little underwhelming and at times repetitive, even while acknowledging the storytelling is intentionally simpler for its target age group. That is a useful counterweight to the four five-star reviews, since it suggests the book's charm may depend on catching a listener at the right age rather than landing universally.
Worth noting too: the price on this listing sits at $8.95, which is modest for a title with this much prestige attached and a runtime under five hours, so the cost of finding out for yourself is fairly low even if the story does not land the same way for every household.
Low-Risk Way to Test Camp Green Lake
Families looking for a short, well-loved classic to share are the core audience here, alongside kids in the upper elementary to middle-school range who like mystery and dark humor, and adults who somehow missed it the first time around and want to see what the fuss is about. The anniversary bonus material gives longtime fans a reason to revisit it even if they already know exactly how Stanley's story ends.
Skip it, or at least temper expectations, if you are hoping the available reviews will tell you anything about Kerry Beyer's performance, since they will not. And if your household already found the story repetitive on the page, as one reviewing family did, no strong reason exists to expect the audio edition changes that equation. For everyone else, a Newbery winner under five hours is a low-risk way to find out if Camp Green Lake earns its reputation for you.
