Small Steps (novel)

Three years after his release from Camp Green Lake, Theodore AKA armpit is living in Austin, Texas trying to build a stable lifestyle by working for a landscaping company and caring for his neighbor Ginny McDonald, a ten-year-old girl with cerebral palsy. He meets Rex "X-Ray" Washburn, a friend from Camp Green Lake, who asks for his help in a ticket scalping scheme for teen pop star Kaira DeLeon's upcoming concert. Armpit tries to use two tickets to impress a crush, who cannot go ; instead, he takes Ginny, but when they present the tickets, they are forged, and Armpit is beaten and handcuffed by police officers. Ginny has a seizure, which the officers misinterpret as a reaction to drugs. When singer Kaira finds out, she invites them backstage, and she later forms a friendship with Armpit.

X-ray later reveals that he sold the original tickets and returns the profit to Armpit. Later, Armpit is questioned by Detective Debbie Newberg of the Austin Police Department, and he invents a fake culprit to avoid suspicion.

After Kaira invites Armpit to San Francisco, he is attacked by members of the scalping ring, who threaten to expose Armpit, unless he gives them a letter from Kaira. Armpit asks for a new letter to sell, but Kaira feels used, and the two fight. Kaira's manager and stepfather, Jerome "El Genius" Paisley, hits Kaira with a metal bat, and the fight continues, until Armpit intervenes. After Kaira is safe, he is interviewed again by Detective Newberg, who admits she knows about the scalping ring but will not be pressing charges. Jerome goes to jail, and Kaira discovers her mother's best friend has stolen her savings. She decides to continue touring to recap some of her finances.

The story ends when Armpit hears Kaira sing a song she wrote about him and accepts his life cannot revolve around her; instead, he decides to continue with his plan of taking small steps towards making a better life for himself.

In a review for Holes, Josh Lacey commented Small Steps "has a lot to recommend it - funny dialogue, a fast-moving story, some emotive scenes, an interesting central character - but does inevitably suffer by comparison with Sachar's last novel."[2] During his review for the New York Times, A.O. Scott praised the novel's prose as being "clear and relaxed, and funny in a low-key, observant way," and observed that unlike Holes, in Small Steps "the realism is more conventional, and the book sticks more closely to the genre of young-adult problem literature."[3]

• Sachar, Louis. Small Steps. New York: Delacorte, 2006. Print.
• Sachar, Louis. Small Steps, Holes Series, New York: Delacorte, 2006. Press.