millinocket's Full Review: Louis Sachar - Small Steps
I love Holes. Both the book and the movie. Therefore, I love Louis Sachar, who wrote both. Is it foolish to love an author based on only a single one of his works? Perhaps. It does tend to put the poor guy on a bit of a pedestal. I read Small Steps with every intention of loving it to bits……..but I didn’t. Not quite.
Small Steps takes one of the characters from Holes and follows him after he leaves Camp Green Lake, where that book took place. The character Sachar chooses for his focus is Theodore – better known to you Holes fans as Armpit. Armpit is trying to put his life back together after his stint at Camp Green Lake. He’s taking it one step at a time – Small Steps, his counselor tells him; he needs to take small steps to get to a place where he is not in danger of ending up right back in trouble. She gives him some pretty grim statistics about the recidivism rate for young African American men and he’s determined not to be a statistic.
So Armpit has a job, he’s working toward finishing high school, and he’s made a good friend in the little girl with cerebral palsy who lives next door. Ginny keeps him grounded, gives him someone to focus on outside of himself, and gives him someone to care about. When another former Camp Green Lake resident shows up offering Armpit some easy money, he knows he should walk away, but he just can’t. The siren song of all that money plus his loyalty to his friend won’t let him. Unfortunately, this is a Big Step, the kind his counselor warned him could sweep him away and dump him right back where he started. Oddly enough, Ginny and a famous pop singer are going to help determine his fate – but somehow he has to first get back to those Small Steps. And he might just have made that impossible.
Sachar puts together great characters. From Armpit to Ginny to X-Ray (former denizen of Camp Green Lake) to Kaira DeLeon (famous pop singer), he draws individuals, not stereotypes. Armpit isn’t all sweetness and light, it wasn’t an accident that he was sent to Camp Green Lake. He’s aware of this and committed to starting anew, but it doesn’t keep him from being hostile to his parents, making bad decisions and generally being stupid on occasion. Ginny isn’t just someone Armpit feels sorry for, she’s really his friend. Despite being a little girl to his young man, she’s not afraid to tell him what she thinks, and she values things in him that other people don’t see. She’s not much for judging by exteriors, she’s used to people doing it to her and refrains from the practice. She’s a great character – unexpected and sweet. Kaira is a little less developed. She’s more of a catalyst, as is X-Ray, and as such they both tend a bit more toward the stereotypical. Not really a flaw, just a common occurrence when dealing with less than central characters.
So why, if I like Armpit and Ginny so well, don’t I love this book? It may well be that Sachar just set the bar too high with Holes, but this story has a far less intricately and cleverly plotted story. It’s a straightforward tale of a young African American man faced with racism and personal demons that make his life difficult. A few interesting coincidences place him in some unusual situations, but there’s nothing remarkable, really, about any of it.
It may be unfair to compare the two books, but it’s inevitable when the main character in Small Steps is drawn from Holes and the people and places in that book are mentioned on multiple occasions. In Holes we get a really imaginative, slightly surreal portrait of present meeting past and boys coming of age in some most unusual circumstances. Small Steps lacks that creative spark that pushes Holes from good to great. The story is simpler. The obstacles Armpit face are more realistic, his reactions more predictable and the resolution less reassuring.
Interestingly, this is a book with an older main character, likely to appeal to an older audience, yet it’s much simpler in construction than Holes, putting it in jeopardy of boring its audience a little, an audience that might not quite yet appreciate Sachar’s fine eye for character. Though the book is well written, it does have a little bit of a jerky feel. It doesn’t flow particularly well from one situation to the next. We seem to jump too quickly, leaving the feeling of gaps in the story. The places where Sachar concentrates on the inner life of Armpit are wonderful, his thoughts and feelings really do form the heart of the book – but the plot doesn’t do quite enough to support him.
As for themes, Sachar definitely has something to say in Small Steps. Where themes can get lost in clever plotting, they shine out of a simpler story. Armpit deals with subtle and not so subtle racism – not in an angry way, but he acknowledges how he’s seen by various people based solely on his appearance. Some of his experiences would not happen to a white man, which again, he acknowledges, though doesn’t particularly dwell upon. Small Steps isn’t a thesis on racism; Sachar is too fine a writer for that. Instead, the book draws the audience into the character so well that when these injustices appear, they are seen for what they are. No amount of lecturing can accomplish for a young audience what a really well written character can simply through his experiences. This is the greatest strength of the book, and the place where the simple story serves a purpose. A greater theme is much more likely to touch the reader when it isn’t in the middle of an intricate plot. This character puts a face on the subtle indignities that racism presents every day, letting readers who haven’t lived it get a glimpse into someone else’s world. That’s a fine achievement.
So no, I don’t love Small Steps as much as I love Holes. But they’re very different books, with very different strengths, despite the ties that bind them. Where Small Steps relies on character and theme, Holes relies on plotting and story, where some of those same themes can get lost to a younger reader. Personally, I prefer the clever storytelling in Holes, but that by no means makes Small Steps a bad book. Despite my disappointment, this book has a place with its intended audience. It hits home with its message through a beautifully developed main character, making it, thematically, extremely strong. The kids who read Small Steps are going to get something different than they get with Holes. It isn’t as inherently entertaining, yet is has more to say and a simpler framework in which to say it. Sachar threw me off by changing his style so much, but this is a book with enormous potential to start a dialogue with older kids who are starting to step out into the world. So yes, buy it, read it, share it with your kids (I’d say ages 10 and up) and let it be a place to begin talking about the real world.
Two years after being released from Camp Green Lake, Armpit is home in Austin, Texas, trying to turn his life around. But it s hard when you have a re...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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