Age 11+

This is the sequel to Sachar’s acclaimed story Holes, which offered a happy-ever-after ending for its protagonists Stanley and Zero, inmates of the Camp Green Lake correctional facility. Small Steps now follows two minor characters, the delinquent teenagers Armpit and X-Ray. One of the merits of Holes was how it knitted together three distinct stories: Eastern Europe, the Wild West and the boot camp. It also interwove magic with the realism. Small Steps is more straightforward, with one linear narrative, and its only fantastical element is one of wish fulfilment — that if you go to a pop concert the star might fall for you.

Armpit has put the digging experience he gained at Camp Green Lake to good use and now works for a gardening firm, while his befriending of a young girl with cerebral palsy has given him a sense of purpose and self-worth. Meanwhile, X-Ray wants to get rich quick, using Armpit’s hard-earned savings, and their joint venture into ticket touting takes Armpit to Hollywood, where he finds love and foils a murder plot. Although slighter than Holes, Small Steps still has Sachar’s familiar ease, intelligence, humour, suspense and humanity.

(Bloomsbury £12.99)

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