The Raygor Readability Estimate for Holes

by Louis Sachar

Random House Children's Books New York 1998

Passage 1. Page 6

Stanley was sitting about ten rows back, handcuffed to his armrest. His backpack lay on the seat next to him. It contained his toothbrush, toothpaste, and a box of stationary his mother had given him. He'd promised to write to her at least once a week.

He looked out the window, although there wasn't much to see – mostly fields of hay and cotton. He was on a long bus ride to nowhere. The Bus wasn't air-conditioned, and the hot heavy air was almost as stifling as the handcuffs.

Stanley and his parents had tried to pretend that he was just...

Passage 2. Page 116

Stanley dug his shovel into the ground. His hole was about three and a half feet deep in the center. He grunted as he pried up some dirt, then flung it off to the side. The sun was almost directly overhead.

He glanced at his canteen lying beside his hole. He knew it was half full, but he didn't take a drink just yet. He had to drink sparingly, because he didn't know who would be driving the water truck the next time it came.

Three days had passed since the Warden had scratched Mr. Sir. Every time Mr. Sir...

Passage 3. Page 230

Even the contents of the suitcase turned out to be somewhat tedious. Stanley's father pried it open in his workshop, and at first everyone gasped at the sparkling jewels. Stanley thought he and Hector had become millionaires. But the jewels were of poor quality, worth no more than twenty thousand dollars.

Underneath the jewels was a stack of papers that had once belonged to the first Stanley Yelnats. These consisted of stock certificates, deeds of trust, and promissory notes. They were hard to read and even more difficult to understand. Ms. Morengo's law firm spent more than two months going...

	sentences	words
Passage 1	7.5	23
Passage 2	7.8	17
Passage 3	7.8	35
Total	23.1	75
Average	7.7	25

This gives Holes a readability of the 6th grade.