By: Patricia McCormick Publisher: Hyperion Book CH Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Hyperion Book CH Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 272 Publication Date: April 01, 2008 Reading Level: Young Adult Release Date: April 01, 2008
A sensitive topic, but worth the read This is truly a story that will open your eyes to what goes on in other parts of the world. As a female, I feel fortunate to live in a country where women are valued. But through this appreciation, I can't help but feel sadness for the girls that are sold for the sake of earning some money to feed their families. The topic of this story may be difficult to take, but one that everyone should read. McCormick does an exceptional job of capturing the voice of a 13 year old girl through the use of vignettes. Sold is a quick read, it will grab your attention from the first page. If you are pondering the idea of reading this book, I think you should take the leap and open up this book.
finished in one night Sold is written like a mental journal. i read in the back that the author interviewed girls that had actually been sex slaves. she seemed to have taken everything they told her and put it in the book. the pages are not always full of words. some pages will have only a few paragraphs making it short. thats why i finished so fast, there wasn't a lot to read. i finished in a few hours. i would say its good. it wasn't perfect, but it was truthful. id rather get the truth about being a sex slave than sacrifice logic for drama. you know what i mean?
Courtesy of Mother Daughter Book Club.com Sold is the story about a Nepalese girl--13-year-old Lakshmi-- who leaves home thinking she will be working to support her desperately poor family. In reality she has been sold into the sexual slave trade and is taken far away from anything that is relevant to her. A fictional tale of a very real event, Sold is an important book that sheds light on how easily girls can be lured away from their families and into situations from which it is difficult for them to escape.
To research her story, McCormick traveled to the countries of India and Nepal, and she interviewed the women living in Calcutta's red-light district, as well as girls who had been rescued from sexual slavery. As the mother of two daughters, I think it's important for them to know that cases like these are not isolated, and sexual slavery occurs all over the world, even in the U.S.
I believe Sold would make for a very interesting discussion with a mother-daughter book club. The scenes of Lakshmi's life before she leaves home are bittersweet as well as enlightening about what life is like for the people who live in the villages of Nepal. And Lakshmi is as innocent as you might expect any girl her age to be. Her voice rings true throughout the book; she's a very real character.
A non-fiction book I recently read on this topic called Not for Sale: The Return of the Global Slave Trade and How We Can Fight It by David Batstone makes a great companion to Sold. Batstone tells of organizations in many different countries that are fighting this horrific practice, and gives ideas for what each of us can do to help support them.
loved it !!!!!!!!!!! OK so i loved this book. i was on my class trip when i got it and i really couldnt put it down. I love reading but i normaly skim threw books but read them at the same time but i couldnt with this book it was that good. But anyways its about a young girl and she lives in Inda her stepfather is a drunk kinda and he gambles (alot) and one day they really needed money so he sold her and told her that she was going to be a maid but she really was going to be a prostatut (i thik thats how you spell it im only 14 sorry) but when she gets their she's scared and then the person that owns her beats her cause she wouldnt do what she was spouss to and she starved her that lady was a very crul women. But anyways i dont wont to ruin the book but i hope this was helpful if you read it
Not Easy to Look At
Patricia McCormick has written about a topic most of us find too repelling to think about--the sexual slavery of children. In her book, Sold (2006, Hyperion), she writes of the forces at work in the life of Lakshmi, a thirteen-year-old Nepalese girl who is forced to leave her home in the Himalayas to work in the red-light district of Calcutta. Though fictitious, McCormick's thorough research---including interviews with women who worked in Calcutta's brothels and young girls who were rescued---allows this story to be realistically and believably told.
Sold is written in vignettes, small glimpses of one to two pages each, and is told through the eyes of Lakshmi. The author's spare use of language and carefully chosen imagery gives the story an innocence, a purity of space on the page within which the reader is able to know a young girl and travel with her through the depths of horrific injustice.
Lakshmi's story begins in the Himalayas, a place of unforgiving natural consequences: in the dry season the dust from the river bed causes coughing disease, the cold season brings fever, the rainy season brings leeches and loose bowel disease. Infant mortality is high, and even when a child survives, life continues to bring unrelenting hardships. Lakshmi is a survivor. In spite of the hardships, she is able to keep her optimism and dreams of a better life. Her dream of getting a tin roof on the family's thatched hut makes the promise of a job as maid to a wealthy lady in the city seem like the answer to her prayers. She does not know that her stepfather has sold her into a ring of sex slave dealers, and her trust remains unshaken until she arrives in Calcutta. There she realizes the true nature of her job. She struggles in vain against her captors; her dreams are shattered, and she is alone is a large city hundreds of miles from her home. Lakshmi's story is not an unusual one---or perhaps it is---most young children caught up in this trade do not live to tell their story. The value of a girl's life in this culture can be summed up in the words of Lakshmi's stepfather, "A son will always be a son, they say. But a girl is like a goat. Good as long as she gives you milk and butter. But not worth crying over when it's time to make a stew." (8)
It is difficult to recommend a book like Sold. It is a powerfully written story based on a subject I would rather believe did not exist. But all across the world, there are families like Lakshmi's: families with average yearly earnings of $300 US--the cost of an iPod--who are willing to sell their daughters for 800 rupees, $11 US--the cost of a couple of burgers at a drive-through restaurant. For all of the young people who are suffering Lakshmi's fate at this very moment, you must read this book.
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