Small Steps, by Louis Sachar

Small Steps is a follow-up book to Sachar’s classic, Holes. Instead of focusing on Stanley Yelnats, it focuses on Armpit and X-Ray, who are older in this book and of course, free from digging holes at Camp Green Lake. Armpit is the main character in this book, and X-Ray makes troublesome appearances from time to time.

Armpit is now free, but has attended counseling and has been told to make small steps in order to build a good life for himself and build the trust of others. He has been told that the rates of recidivism amongst African American males is extremely high, and as a result, in order to ensure that he doesn’t end up back in detention, he needs to take small steps and go about improving his life in legitimate, non-criminal ways. Armpit has a job and is taking summer courses to catch up with students his own age. Armpit works for a landscaping company, and his boss likes him because he digs holes very quickly, and very well.

Enter X-Ray. X-Ray has heard that tickets to superstar Kiara Deleon’s concerts can be scalped for hundreds of dollars, so he talks Armpit into buying several tickets to resell for inflated prices. X-Ray steps on the toes of some fellow scalpers, and very nearly lands himself and Armpit back in hot water. The final portion of the book is how they get out of trouble, and about how Armpit develops a relationship with the aforementioned Ms. Deleon.

I selected this book because as a follow up to Holes, (winner of the Newberry Medal) which I thought was quite funny, I assumed this book would be humorous as well. It deals somewhat delicately with the topic of troubled youth, but it is not funny. There are amusing and droll parts, but unlike Holes, the characters are not naturally funny, and the tomfoolery among the boys at Camp Green Lake is absent, as it focuses on a much smaller cast of characters. I would recommend this book to tweens as a lesson on learning things the hard way, but not as a humor book.