Gopal, a young and ambitious boy, lives with his family on a farm in India. As times get hard and the family loses the farm, they decide to move to the city in hopes of job opportunities. When they continue to struggle to keep food on the table in the city, Gopal takes it upon himself to find a job that will help the family. He can't stand to sit around while he and his younger brother and sister are hardly getting food. Soon after he gets a job working for a factory owner that has given his word to meet his needs, he is hit with the reality that he has been scammed into working in a hot, humid, and horribly-smelling building with many other boys his age. If he and the boys do not meet the expectation of the cruel overseer, they are beaten and punished. They are not even allowed to call each other by name. The boys begin telling each other stories at night and start building relationships with each other. Gopal hopes to escape one day and live with his family once again, but that is not a task he can accomplish on his own.
Child labor is far more common than people realize, and this book shows some of the harsh realities of life as a child labor slave. 316 pgs, pb. ~ Brianna
Trapped.
For eleven-year-old Gopal and his family, life in their rural Indian village is over: We stay, we starve, his baba has warned. They flee to the big city of Mumbai in hopes of finding work and a brighter future. Gopal is eager to help support his struggling family, so when a stranger approaches him with the promise of a factory job, he jumps at the offer.
But there is no factory, just a stuffy sweatshop where he and five other boys are forced to work for no money and little food. The boys are forbidden to talk or even to call one another by their real names. Locked away in a rundown building, Gopal despairs of ever seeing his family again.
But late one night, when Gopal decides to share kahanis, or stories, he realizes that storytelling might be the boys' key to survival. If he can make them feel more like brothers than enemies, their lives will be more bearable in the shop—and they might even find a way to escape.
| Product Format: | Paperback |
|---|---|
| Brand: | Balzer & Bray |
| Author: | Kashmira Sheth |
| Grades: | 3-6 |
| ISBN: | 9780061857621 |
| Length in Inches: | 7.5 |
| Width in Inches: | 5.125 |
| Height in Inches: | 0.625 |
| Weight in Pounds: | 0.45 |
