{"id":10211,"date":"2006-05-08T09:24:38","date_gmt":"2006-05-08T13:24:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2006\/05\/08\/10211.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:54:51","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:54:51","slug":"book-report-small-steps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2006\/05\/08\/book-report-small-steps\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: Small Steps"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

So the odd thing about Louis Sachar, from my point of view, is that although I liked Holes<\/I> all right (I really liked the beginning, but was a trifle disappointed with the middle and end), my Perfect Non-Reader simply adored<\/I> the Wayside School<\/I> series. I mean crazy<\/I> about them. So I think of him as the Wayside School<\/I> guy, writing for—what—six- to eight-year olds? Something like that. Anyway, when I picked Small Steps<\/a> off the library shelf, or when my Best Reader did (I can’t recall which), I had sort of forgotten that it would be YA, rather than kid lit. So I was surprised by how forthrightly he was dealing with race, sex (or at least sexual attraction), and violence.\n

It’s an interesting book, although I didn’t love it. It was a lot less surreal than Holes<\/I>, and held a lot less mystery. On the other hand, it’s a more serious book. I suspect that Mr. Sachar wanted to make a couple of points about recidivism, race and reality, and tried to slip them in with a spoonful of plot sugar. I can’t tell if it comes off preachy or not.\n

I should point out, though, that it’s interesting to me that this Young Adult book has a protagonist who is fresh out of juvenile detention, and who is hard-working and serious about trying to get straight and<\/I> who cuts class to engage in some illegal commerce. He’s a good kid, sweet to his neighbors, who uses his threatening image as a big black ex-con to his advantage. And he violently resists arrest. Admittedly, it was a false arrest, and it was clear he was mostly arrested for being a big black ex-con, but still. He hits a police officer. And he’s the good guy. It’s interesting, is all.\n

chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So the odd thing about Louis Sachar, from my point of view, is that although I liked Holes all right (I really liked the beginning, but was a trifle disappointed with the middle and end), my Perfect Non-Reader simply adored…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10211"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17750,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10211\/revisions\/17750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}