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National Book Award Finalist - Highly Recommended Oct 15, 2006 (45 of 46 found this helpful)
This account of a young girl in India sold into the sex trade by best-selling author Patricia McCormick is extraordinary. I am an adult and after reading this book I was stunned by what is occurring to thousands of unsuspecting 13-year old girls in this part of the world.
This book will appeal to adolescents and adults alike in educating about the horrors of a rarely publicized epidemic. You wonder how a value can be placed on innocent children who are being sold for a handful of rupees to help their poor families back home.
The book is written in free verse which makes it a unique and very personal way of seeing the world from the main character, Lakshmi's eyes. I can certainly understand why this book is a National Book Award Finalist and hopefully a winner. However, this book is already a winner in my eyes.
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Difficult Topic Handled with Sensitivity Oct 12, 2007 (20 of 20 found this helpful)
Writing about how Nepalese girls are sold into slavery and taken to India to be forced into a life of prostitution is no easy matter -- especially in a YA book. Given the topic, Patricia McCormick manages not only to pull it off, but to pull it off with sensitivity.
McCormick is a writer's writer, and the calibre of wordsmithing is a cut above your average YA fare. She first conjures the natural beauty of mountainous Nepal, even though her protagonist, a thirteen-year-old girl named Lakshmi, is dirt poor. Then, for contrast, she describes the claustrophobic penury and filth of Lakshmi's city captivity. In Nepal, our young protagonist lives with her Ama and her evil stepfather (a twist on the Cinderella motif). It is he who ultimately gambles what little they have away and heartlessly sells his stepdaughter into slavery (she assumes she is going off to be a maid and bravely vows to send what she earns home so her Ama can install a tin roof on their hut).
After a grueling trip into India, Lakshmi slowly discovers what's up and refuses to partake, but is drugged and forced to acquiesce. There are two scenes where it is clear what is happening, yet McCormick is anything but brutal and ugly while describing these brutal and ugly acts against an innocent child. Nevertheless, a mature and sensitive reader is called for, and the book is recommended more for high school aged readers and adults.
Written in free verse, an increasingly popular style of writing in the YA trade, SOLD will move you and anger you -- exactly McCormick's intent. It's beautifully written and worth all of the accolades it has received (it is a National Book Award finalist). Highly recommended.
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Sold Oct 15, 2006 (15 of 15 found this helpful)
Patricia McCormick
Realistic fiction
Lakshmi has 13 marks on her mother's chest, showing that she has lived through 13 years. Lakshmi lives in Nepal with her mother, brother, and step-father. Lakshmi's family is so poor they barley afford food. Lakshmi's mother, Ama, works very hard caring things back and forth for the men that work. With that money Lakshmi's step-father gambles it away at the Tea House. Lakshmi goes to school and she is top of her class. Lakshmi loves school, playing with her friend Gita and her goat. But when the Himalayan rains wash away all the family's crops, the family is left with nothing. So Lakshmi's step father sends her off to work for a family to support her family. Lakshmi is tricked into thinking that she will be a maid, but really she is sold into prostitution. Lakshmi moves to a brothel in India to work. She lives in a house called, "The happiness House," with other girls, until she pays off her families debt. Lakshmi's world in a blur, as she lives life at it's worst.
I would give this book five stars. I would rate it the book so high, because of the depth of the writing. This book is a real page turner, because there is no dull part of the book. Patricia McCormick writes about some very hard issues in descriptive vignettes. Sold is written in first person, so the reader can really fell what Lakshmi is going through.
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Courtesy of Teens Read Too Jan 23, 2007 (17 of 19 found this helpful)
SOLD tells the story of Lakshmi, who lives in a tiny mountain village in Nepal. She lives in a hut with her stepfather, mother, and baby brother. Poverty is all Lakshmi knows. She speaks of swallowing her spit and pretending it is soup, tightening her waistcloth to fool her belly into thinking it's full, and thickening her stew with dirt. Lakshmi dreams of going to the city like some girls and working for a rich family to send money back to her own relatives on the mountain.
One day her stepfather returns home with a woman he says Lakshmi should call Auntie. He has made a deal for Auntie to take Lakshmi down the mountain to work. It seems her dream has come true, and her journey begins.
Traveling down the Nepalese mountain and across the border into India is at once both exciting and frightening. Lakshmi, whose mountain life has been nothing but poverty and hard work, marvels at the sights and sounds of city life. Trains, buses, cars, and trucks amaze her. There are crowds of people and shops as far as the eye can see.
Lakshmi arrives at her destination. She is told she will be working for a woman she is to call Auntie Mumtaz. Prepared to work hard and earn her keep, Lakshmi is shocked to discover what her real duties will be. She is thrust into the arms of an old man with onion breath. He kisses her and begins to demand the unthinkable. Terrified, Lakshmi runs. Auntie Mumtaz
orders her capture and locks her in a room. After days of starvation, beatings, and cruel treatment, Lakshmi realizes she will need to cooperate to survive.
Patricia McCormick uses a blunt and direct narrative style to present Lakshmi's horrific experiences. The story is heartbreaking, yet uplifting, as Lakshmi shows courage and determination to maintain her identity and survive her ordeal. Readers will hold Lakshmi in their thoughts long after finishing her story.
Reviewed by: Sally Kruger, aka "Readingjunky"
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English teacher gives this book a B+ May 4, 2007 (10 of 10 found this helpful)
I bought this book for my Freshman English classroom library on the reputation of McCormick's earlier novel "Cut" and as a possible tie-in to Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" (which I read last year w/a Senior class). As other fellow readers have mentioned, the topic of "Sold" is modern-day slavery. The book is written in a series of free verse poems (which seems to be in vogue for many recent YA Lit titles), which allows easy access for many students. Keep in mind, however, the subject matter is rather mature though the lexile level isn't particularly daunting.
For the first quarter of the novel, McCormick does an exceptional job of transporting the Reader to the farmlands of Nepal. I did really feel like I was in another world, very different from my southern Californian environment. The whole process of being sold into slavery is also handled beautifully. It is all very subtle. Only after several entries, does the protagonist (like the Reader) realize the gravity of her situation. Two-thirds of the novel is spent describing life in the brothel: the humiliation, the optimism of leaving, the crushing realization that you can never really leave, mistrust, hope, risk.
Overall, I liked the book. I think it deals with a seldom discussed topic, albeit an important one. McCormick's Afterword at the end of the book really brought the issue home that this is not some isolated case, extraordinary for its uniqueness. It is haunting to think that this story goes on in the lives of thousands of young people every day! The only thing I found fault with the novel was its rather abrupt ending (which I won't spoil). If you purchase "Sold", I don't think you will be disappointed. A very good read.