FINISHED:

Sheth, Kashmira. (2010). Boys without names. New York: Balzer + Bray.

[Nominated this one for our Distinguished List:

Gopal and his family flee rural India with barely more than the clothes on their backs in an effort to escape debt and find work in Mumbai. Once there, Gopal is determined to help out by finding work only to be lured into slaving in a sweatshop gluing beads onto frames without any hope of being able to leave/escape. Five other boys are also being held captive with Gopal by a man whom Gopal has nicknamed Scar, and when Gopal arrives, the boys are so defeated and powerless that they have lost their identities and become nameless. Gopal opens up to the other boys by telling them stories which are accounts of actual events in his life, and, ultimately, it is because of his telling these autobiographical kahanis that he and the other boys begin to get to know each other, eventually revealing/gaining their actual names rather the nicknames that Gopal has assigned to each. Gopal is a likeable and exemplary character with whom the reader sympathizes as he is tirelessly concerned with his families’ well-being, doing everything he can to find a way to make money and make things less desperate for his young twin siblings. Although the novel takes awhile to get going (Gopal doesn’t end up in the sweatshop until a third of the way through) and the ending is a bit abrupt, this is an encouraging, and often harrowing, tale of a strong young man who ends up stifled and enslaved, but, through the power of self and storytelling, ultimately finds his freedom. (Reviewed from ARC.)]

STARTED:
Stork, Francisco X. (2010). The last summer of the Death Warriors. New York: Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic.

[Reviewing for ACL.]

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