Small Steps, cover may vary

Small Steps by Louis Sachar is a captivating novel that can both bring tears to your eyes and make you laugh out loud. Though it serves as a sequel to the author's other popular novel Holes, I find Small Steps even more engaging and well-written. Sachar's writing remains consistently high in quality - vivid, entertaining, rhythmic, and memorable. One example of Sachar's descriptive prowess is this passage: “Even in her high heels, Aileen was shorter than Kaira. Everything about her was small: her waist, her feet, her ears, her mouth. She was stylish, efficient, and compact, like a cell phone.”Such imagery brings the characters to life in a way that is both relatable and vivid. Moreover, the novel is easy to understand yet rich in deeper meanings. Consider this insightful analogy:"Life is like crossing a river. If you try to take too big a step, the current will knock you off your feet and carry you away." This resonates with the Chinese proverb:“ A fine horse can leap a long distance, but it still cannot cover ten steps in one leap; a slow horse, with persistent effort, can travel a great distance.” The book's central message is about taking life step-by-step, avoiding greed, and persistently working towards one's goals. Sachar brilliantly conveys that with patience and steady effort, success is attainable.

Amazing, but nothing can beat the first holes book!

Loved the first book - Holes. This was good but seemed to be aimed at a slightly older child than the first book.

After reading the sequel to this book, Holes, I wasn't optimistic that this book would be as good and as unputtadownable. However I was hugely mistaken. Small Steps is a wonderful book which, mind the cliché, kept me hooked from the first page. Following the trend started by Holes, Small Steps was a novel filled with many wonderful plot twists which kept you on the edge of your seat, unable to take your eyes off the page. Unlike its prequel, the book contained romance which opened its potential to a wider range of audience. It's characters were excellently explained and by the end of the book you seemed to know them so well you might as well have known them your entire life. As well as this the places in the book were also well depicted. In conclusion, Small Steps is an absolute must-read for anybody of any age. Easily one of my favourite books of all time, and I'm sure it will be one of yours too.

My 10 year old son had been reading this book at school and he loved it so much he asked me to purchase it for him.

An awesome read, would definitely recommend🤩🤩🤩 A touching account of armpits journey after the bestselling novel Holes, it was throughly enjoyable!

Although not promoted as a sequel to 'Holes' (despite picking up the stories of two of its characters and having - oh, goodness me, what's that..? - a great big shovel on the front cover), a lot of people seem likely to buy this having fallen in love with 'Holes' first. Alas, they are unlikely to fall in love with 'Small Steps'. All the things that are magical about 'Holes' - the spare, almost parable-like style, the multi-layered narrative and brilliantly executed 'reveals', the compelling storyline and characterisations - are depressingly AWOL here. It's not horrendous by any means - Armpit is an amiable enough protagonist, and following him around is a tolerably engaging experience - but the narrative twists and turns feel clunky and desperately contrived (especially the violent and utterly unbelievable climax in the hotel...), while the 'romantic' element is handled in such an anodyne, gutless fashion that any teen or post-teen reader will cringe. Hard to believe that it was written by the same author as 'Holes', frankly.

This came instantly to my kindle. Holes is a tough act to follow. In the past few years, Sachar has written the screenplay for the movie of Holes and published a companion guide to the book, complete with tips on digging the perfect hole, but waited until now to write another novel. Small Steps isn't exactly a sequel to Holes, but features two minor characters from the book, Theodore and Rex, aka Armpit and X-Ray; it picks up their stories a couple of years after their escape from the Camp Green Lake Juvenile Correctional Facility. They have both moved to Austin, Texas (which is also Sachar's home). Armpit lives with his parents and works for a landscape gardener, digging yet more holes, while trying to catch up with the schooling that he's missed. X-Ray drives around Austin in a rusty Honda Civic, making a nuisance of himself. Stanley Yelnats, the hero of Holes, isn't even mentioned by name, although there is a sly reference to him: Armpit has been sent a free case of Sploosh, the deodorant invented by Stanley's dad, and he sprays it on his feet and armpits every day