Written entirely in prose, Sold, by Patricia McCormick, is the story of a Nepali girl, Lakshmi, who is sold into prostitution in India by here step-father. Although fictional in narrative, the constructs of the book are completely real; according to the endnote, around 12,000 children are sold to become sex slaves in Indian brothels by their extremely poor families, many unwillingly.
A National Book Award Finalist in 2006, the book follows Lakshmi, a "hill girl" from Nepal. It begins as she cheerily goes about her daily life dreaming of one day saving enough money to buy her mother a tin roof for their house, a sign of prosperity in her village, to her voyage to a strange new city aboard busses and amongst tall buildings after her step-father tells her she is going to work as a maid for a rich family far away from her home.
Although I had mixed feelings about the story being told in prose-form, I can not imagine hearing Lakshmi's tale any other way. Some "chapters," only a few lines long, are more powerful in this medium.
While it is not a subject matter many of us would like to think about, an awareness of the atrocities that affect the world's children is necessary for our society. Check out this book and then pass it on; the lexile is not difficult, it is easy to start and stop, and its impossible to forget.
Sergio del Limónar
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