Louis Sachar has been writing children’s books since the late 1970s, but the enormous popularity of his novel “Holes” – made into a film starring Shia LaBeouf, Sigourney Weaver and Jon Voight – has certainly brought him more attention.

“‘Holes’ was read by a huge, wide variety of people … adults, college, high school kids,” he said of the book, which won the prestigious U.S. National Book Award and the Newbery Medal.

In the past, Sachar didn’t really tour, although he would speak at schools or library conventions.

“I would occasionally be invited to speak at bookstores and sometimes, you know, you’d feel lucky if 20 people showed up,” he said during a recent stop in Toronto.

“Which is why I only went to schools. At schools you have a captive audience, 300 or so kids, and they’d all been studying your books and are real interested and excited.”

But now, Sachar is travelling extensively with his new book “Small Steps,’ which follows the travails of Armpit and X-Ray, two characters from Holes’ juvenile detention centre Camp Green Lake, after they return home to Austin, Texas.

And Sachar, who lives in Austin with his wife (they have a 19-year-old daughter), finds he’s really connecting with his reading public throughout the United States.

“In this tour, it’s been pretty much consistent, 300 people showing up at bookstores all across the country,” Sachar said during an interview at the offices of his Canadian publisher, Doubleday. “It’s been really touching.”

In Philadelphia, among the kids, parents and teachers who turned up for autographs was a young woman who’d read one of his Wayside School books, written in the mid-1980s, when she was young.

The book had a story about a kid whose parents decided to give him a tattoo for his birthday.

“The story’s all about everybody at school telling him what sort of tattoo he should get, a leopard fighting a snake or something,” Sachar said. “He comes back and everyone’s disappointed because they don’t even see it, and he finally shows it, lifts up his pant leg and it’s just a little potato above his ankle, and everyone tells him what a horrible tattoo it is. And he doesn’t care because it makes him happy.”

The woman in Philadelphia showed Sachar a little tattoo over her ankle.

“A potato,” he said with a chuckle. “That was really amazing.”

“Holes” focused on Stanley Yelnats’s stay at a work camp where troubled youth were forced to dig holes in a lake bottom in the sweltering heat. Readers expecting a sequel about their hero Stanley, played in the movie by LaBeouf, won’t find it in “Small Steps.”

“I felt like I’d already told Stanley’s story and left him in a pretty good place, along with (his sidekick) Zero,” Sachar said.

“I was intrigued, though, about what would happen to someone like Armpit who wasn’t this redeemed hero. He didn’t have this magical, mystical experience like Stanley did. He dug his holes and now he’s back home, and he’s a year behind in school. I imagined life probably was pretty tough before he went to Green Lake and now it’s going to even be tougher.”

Armpit’s life is getting back on track when X-Ray persuades him to buy concert tickets they can scalp for a quick profit. After that, there’s never a dull moment.