[LM_NET] BOOK: Sold by McCormick

[Doyle_Tony <tdoyle@MUHSD.K12.CA.US>]

Sold by Patricia McCormick

McCormick has a special place in my heart since her book Cut was the first book 
challenge I had to defend (the book is still one of the most popular titles is my 
library).  In Sold she takes on another controversial topic-- forced prostitution.  
Lakshmi is a 13-year-old village girl in Nepal.  Her family is just barely scraping 
by, thanks to her gambling step-father.  When a monsoon washes away their meager 
crops the family faces ruin and starvation.

At her step-father's urging Lakshmi accepts a job working as a maid in the city.  
She hopes to be able to send money home to her mother, enough for food and maybe 
even a real roof for the house.  She is transported by her new "auntie" who hands 
her off to an older man.  Told to pretend she is his wife, she is transported over 
the Indian border and taken to Calcutta.  She soon discovers that she has been sold 
into prostitution.  At the brothel, Happiness House, she is beaten, starved and 
drugged until she submits.

This first-person narrative is told in spare, poetic language.  The account of her 
subjugation is agonizing but never gratuitous.  Lakshmi's strength in the face of 
brutality and humiliation is impressive.  How anyone, much less a 13-year-old girl, 
can endure what Lakshmi experiences is almost beyond imagining.  Most heartbreaking 
of all is the author's note telling readers that Lakshmi's life is based on the 
real life experiences of thousands of Nepalese girls.

This book, like Cut, will be challenged somewhere, sometime.  But it is absolutely 
worth defending.  McCormick handles a sensitive topic better than almost any other 
writer could.  The story is never sensationalistic and is one that demands telling.

Highly recommended for high school.

You can hear a podcast of this review, and others, on the LHS Reading Blog:

http://lhsblog.edublogs.org/

All the podcasts have been converted to MP3 format for faster downloads.
--------------------------------------------------
Tony Doyle, Library Media Teacher 
CSLA Northern Section PR Chair
Livingston High School
Livingston, CA
tdoyle@MUHSD.K12.CA.US
Http://www.lhswolves.org/library/index.htm
Http://lhsblog.edublogs.org
"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture; you just have to get people to 
stop reading them."
Ray Bradbury

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