Small Steps - Louis Sachar

...comes up with the following small steps:
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1. Graduate High School
2. Get a job
3. Save his money
4. Avoid situations which might turn violent. And…
5. Loose the name ‘Armpit’
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These might sound like fairly simple and straight forward goals, but between his old Green Lake companion ‘X-ray’ with his ticket-touting, get-rich-quick schemes, his 10 year old disabled neighbour Ginny and the mysterious yet ...
...book, but be aware that Small Steps is much more of a straight up teen drama, whereas Holes had elements of fantasy interspersed, Small Steps creates most of it’s drama through the interplay between the characters and their developing relationships, rather than the action-driven plot of the first book.
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Fortunately for the anyone who’s coming to this book afresh, Small Steps has been written in such a way that you don’t require any previous ... more

'Break the ice'

Meet Armpit. He’s not had the best start in life, as you can probably already guess. He’s essentially a good kid who’s had a few unlucky breaks and after getting into a fight over some spilled popcorn at a cinema he was sent to the now infamous ‘juvenile correctional facility’ known as Camp Green Lake. The facility was more like a slave labour camp run by a cohort of crooked guards who were using the child labour to attempt to uncover a stash of treasure which legend suggested was buried under the long dried out lake bed. The trials and adventures of this story can be found in the widely acclaimed predecessor to this book, ‘Holes’ (now also a major film), also by Louis Sachar. However even if you haven’t previously read Holes, it won’t take you long at all to get deeply involved in the new stage of Armpit’s adventures as he attempts to take on his councillors advice when leaving Camp Green Lake, who told him that life was like walking upstream in a rushing river that that he should try to take ‘small steps’ to avoid being swept over and to achieve his goals. Armpit takes this advice to heart and comes up with the following small steps:
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1. Graduate High School
2. Get a job
3. Save his money
4. Avoid situations which might turn violent. And…
5. Loose the name ‘Armpit’
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These might sound like fairly simple and straight forward goals, but between his old Green Lake companion ‘X-ray’ with his ticket-touting, get-rich-quick schemes, his 10 year old disabled neighbour Ginny and the mysterious yet alluring rising pop star Kaira DeLeon all vying for his attention, Armpit’s goals soon prove to be a lot more difficult to achieve than they first appeared. When a chance encounter with his female idol at a pop concert thrusts him totally alien world of Hollywood stardom Armpit begins to realise that getting what you thought you wanted isn’t always as straight forward as it first appears. Before long there is a lot more at stake than just achieving his goals and Armpit must make some difficult decisions and follow his head and his heart if he’s going to survive the adventure ahead.
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'Anticipating'

What follows is an engaging and entertaining story which is told with heartfelt affection for the characters and a good blend of humour and drama. If you’ve never come across Louis Sachar you may be tempted to dismiss him as simply a children’s writer (although, if literary history has taught us anything it is that children’s writers are often amongst the best loved and longest enduring authors) but if you were to do that you would deprive yourself of the skills of a masterful storyteller. Sachar weaves his stories carefully and purposefully, investing heavily in his central characters and drawing the reader into every page of the book through an almost instant emotional bond with the main cast and thus the rest of the story.
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If you come to this book after having previously read and enjoyed Holes then you are likely to also enjoy this book, but be aware that Small Steps is much more of a straight up teen drama, whereas Holes had elements of fantasy interspersed, Small Steps creates most of it’s drama through the interplay between the characters and their developing relationships, rather than the action-driven plot of the first book.
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Fortunately for the anyone who’s coming to this book afresh, Small Steps has been written in such a way that you don’t require any previous knowledge of the first book, and although die-hard fans of the first book (or film) may be initially disappointed by the lack of clear tie-in between the two books, hopefully they will quickly be drawn into the intriguing world of Armpit, Ginny, X-Ray and Kaira.
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'Boys (and girls)'

This is essentially a story about relationships. And it’s a fairly comprehensive examination of the complex jumble of feeling and muddle of emotions which mark this particular phase of the characters lives. From jealousy, love, lust, anger, betrayal, there’s a whole spectrum of emotional expression present here and this helps to create the necessary depth in the characters to retain our involvement as the story progresses. Despite the younger target audience Sachar takes a mature look at the nature of relationships, avoiding the simplistic typecast romance/friendship roles he explores the nature of the relationships which exist between the central characters, revealing the vast river of uncertainty and insecurity which flows beneath the surface of any blossoming teen romance, exploring the complex nature of two friends as they grow up together and make decisions which have dramatic consequences on each other’s lives, looking at values like loyalty, honesty and commitment, and also exploring the nature of prejudice in its many forms. From Armpit’s inability to shake off his ‘criminal’ past (and his name!) to the unfair and sometimes cruel assumptions which other children, and adults, make about his close friend and neighbour Ginny who has cerebral palsy (and a wicked sense of humour) Sachar never tries to humour his reader with hollow platitudes about ‘our greatest weakness being our greatest strength’ and is upfront and honest about the difficulties his characters face for reasons often beyond their making and outside of their control.
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Likewise the portrayal of the various relationships and interplay between the main characters is both sensitive and raw as Sachar doesn’t shy away from exposing the more negative aspects of human relationships. None of his characters are perfect and all make decisions based on selfishness, fear or anger which will have consequences for their own, and each others, futures. Again this is an element of Sachar’s storytelling which rings true with our own experiences and so helps to enhance our sense of identity with the characters as they are seen as multi-facetted and complex characters rather than the run of the mill typecasts from your average teen drama. The friendship between Armpit, a well-meaning but sometimes misguided young lad, and Ginny, a sweet natured younger girl who refuses to let her crippling cerebral palsy prevent her from enjoying life is particularly moving. You really get the strong sense of the bond of mutual love and respect which unites this unlikely pair as they struggle together against the various challenges and prejudices which life throws at them, drawing strength and solace from each other’s companionship. This was, for me, one aspect of the book which I found most engaging and moving, to the point where I was actually moved to tears in a particularly difficult and heart-rendering exchange between them (yes, dear reader, beneath this bestubbled, chisel-chinned, taughtly-toned exterior there beats a heart of melted butter).
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'I’m not a girl, not yet a woman'

One of the book’s central and most engaging characters is that of Kaira DeLeon a young raising starlet, thrust into the harsh spotlight of fame and expected to act and perform to a level and intensity well beyond her years. It’s a story we know well, but which is both sensitive and honestly portrayed, with Sachar managing to inject enough individuality and zest into his young rising protégé that although this particular plot arc may feel familiar at times, it never becomes contrived. Kaira is painted as multifaceted character who happens to find herself propelled into a very adult world and yet manages to retain her personality and identity relatively intact throughout the experience.
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Sachar treads a very careful line in his description of Kaira’s experiences and in so doing he manages to carefully avoid the extreme pitfalls of either glorifying her fame or demonising it. Kaira isn’t simply labelled as a helpless victim of a cynical marketing machine (although there are elements of that side of the business which are freely exposed), and neither is she idolised as the poor-kid-comes-good teenage fantasy who gets to live the American dream as a world famous pop star. The American Dream is there on display, but it’s tattered around the edges and fraying at the seams, and no one, especially not Kaira, is under any illusion about where the system is heading or what’s driving it. Kaira is a feisty teenager who, despite being more battle-hardened and world-wearied by her profession than most of her peers, still manages to retain a warm, humorous and often vulnerable side which is fitting of a girl of her age. She’s both sassy enough that we believe that she could carry off her stage presence whilst also frail enough that we continue to accept her as a three dimensional character who Armpit would be able to relate to and perhaps, love.
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'And then we kiss'

At the core of the book is a tentative love-story between two very different teenagers who seem to be irresistibly drawn from different worlds by some external force, and yet their faltering affections for each other are far from straightforward. Sachar doesn’t let any of his characters off lightly, and just when it appears that these young star-crossed lovers are about to get a break, reality hits them hard and time after time they learn that, as another composer once put it ‘the path of true love never does run straight’.
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Though we find ourselves rooting for Armpit and Kaira, it’s also made clear that it’s not just a simple case of ‘them Vs the world’ but that they have difficult and important decision which they must both make if they are going to determine to let their relationship blossom. And for all of us who can remember that strangely intoxicating yet utterly disorientating and altogether unsettling sensation of being a ‘teenager in love’ there are elements of this relationship which, when all else is stripped away, remind us of our own experiences, and so helps to cement our empathy with the central characters and increase the necessary tension in the drama of the final scenes.
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None of this happens by accident, and although Sachar writes with a light touch and almost casual style, this remains a very well thought through and constructed book with a rare depth.
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'Me against the music'

Elements of this book remind me of a Judy Bloom novel, especially the classic tales of pre-teenage angst found in ‘Superfudge’ and ‘Tales of a Fourth Grade nothing’. However Small Steps is written for a more savvy, self-aware and perhaps cynical, post-MTV generation. For kids who’ve witnessed the dramatic rise and fall of Brittany Spears in all its surround-sound, wide-screen, High Definition glory. From bright-eyed, innocent girly Disney presenter to washed-out, shaven-headed, drug-overdosing mentally unstable single mother going over the brink of nervous breakdown. The illusion is thoroughly shattered, the Hollywood bubble well and truly burst and these are kids who aren’t quite as innocent or naive about the complex emotions of the adult world as we’d perhaps like to think. Sachar knows this, and manages not to patronise his audience by telling them what they should think, crediting them with the emotional intelligence to process theses complex issues whilst not becoming so bogged down in the mêlée of emotions as to loose his way with the core narrative of the plot.
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Despite this difference in style and context what these writers share in common is a sense of genuineness, a real authenticity which allows the characters to come alive much more than the clichéd stereotypes we are so often exposed to from main stream media. I think this is why these books will always remain popular with adults as well as teenagers, because they ring true to our own experiences and remind us all of those awkward yet exciting years which exist in the no-man’s land between childhood and adulthood. Phillip Pullman is another author who can craft a dramatic story around an authentic emotional core of his young protagonists.
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Even though Sachar writes with an innate awareness of the cultural context in which the story takes place, and makes numerous references to the money-driven, power-house which is the modern music industry, he resists the temptation to use the book to make his own political commentary on the ‘state of society’. And although it’s hard not come away without feeling a certain level of healthy distain towards elements of the ‘system’ which churn out one hyper-sexed pubescent child star after another before discarding them onto the car-wreck scrap heap that is the front page ‘Hello’ magazine, Sachar isn’t heavy handed with his criticism, instead allowing the characters to speak for themselves and the reader to draw their own conclusions, something which will appeal greatly to the target audience of young adults, as it does us, ‘older’ readers.
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'Baby one more time'

None of this should in anyway suggest, however, that there isn’t ample action, drama, tension and even violence in Small Steps, just that these are supporting elements to main thrust of the narrative which is about the struggles of a group of young teenagers trying to find their place in an adult world. In that sense there’s nothing truly original about the book, but Louis Sachar is a master craftsman when it comes to creating and sustaining interest in his central characters.
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The plot moves swiftly and there is little time for reflection as circumstances conspire to whisk our characters towards the dramatic climax. As a result you may feel a little breathless when finishing the book, and the real weight of the story remains with you for days after you’ve finished reading it.
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'My only wish'

So, after such a glowing review, why only 4 stars, and would I recommend this book? The answer to the second question is easy and categorical – yes! I think that just about anyone could and should enjoy this book, the only caveat being younger children (see explanation below). As for the rating, it’s a tough call. Although I really enjoyed the book, for all the reasons previously stated, I couldn’t help feeling that the ending was somewhat abrupt, and even slightly rushed. It seemed to jar with the flow of the rest of the book, and although exciting and dramatic, it left me feeling everso slightly cheated that I hadn’t been given a satisfactory conclusion to the carefully woven string of events which had led up to the ending. That’s not to say that it wasn’t a great read, only that it almost felt as though the story had been unnaturally truncated, either to keep it short, or, possibly, to set it up for an almost inevitable sequel. I certainly hope it’s the latter. I’m quite sure that other readers would see this same weakness as a strength of the book, and so I encourage you to read it for yourself and draw your own conclusion.
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'Overprotected'

Although this is branded as a children’s book it’s content is really aimed at young teenagers, and it’s writing style is accessible to adults of any age. Some of the themes of love and angst might wash over a younger audience, and there is a somewhat sinister tension which runs throughout the plot, only surfacing towards the very end of the book in a surprisingly violent and graphic conclusion which may not be suitable for all young readers. If your children are under the age of 12 I’d suggest you read this first to assess whether you think it’s appropriate (having said that, a recent US survey estimated that by age 10 the average child in America had witnessed over 8,000 murders on TV, so it’s your call!). It will only take you a few hours and I can assure you that those hours won’t be wasted as you’ll have a positive experience along the way.
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Despite being set in Austin, Texas, and there being many references to specifically American culture, I don’t think that this would pose any problems for modern young readers, most of whom have been so totally immersed in American culture since their conception that they’d probably not even notice any cultural differences in the text.
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'Gimme More'

Although it weighs in at 257 pages (large, well spaced font type) the writing style is fluid and conversational making it easy to read quickly so it can be read in a single long sitting, or spread over the course of a few days. If this review has peaked your interest (and if not, why not?) then you’ll be pleased to know that Small Steps can be purchased from all major booksellers and online retailers. The RRP is £6.99 but it can be had for around £5 if you’re prepared to do some shopping around and at that price it is well worth your money.
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'Kill the lights'

‘Cause this review is o-ver. Thanks for reading come back soon y’all!

© Tom West 2009 

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