Boys Without Names

by Kashmira Sheth

Eleven-year-old Gopal has just moved with his family from his rural village in India to the big city of Mumbai, leaving his friends and beloved countryside behind. With his father missing and his family in need of cash to survive, Gopal makes the unfortunate decision to trust a boy he meets in the city who offers him work at his uncle's "factory." But there is no factory, just a stuffy "sweatshop" where Gopal and five other boys are imprisoned and forced to...
work for no money and little food. Child labor at its worst! The question is, will Gopal be able to convince these boys to trust him so that they can band together and find a way to escape and return to his beloved family?

What I appreciated so much about this book is that it deals with a real world issue that I want to know more about. Although the character of Gopal is fictitious, there are young boys and girls like him all over the world that are taken from their families and forced into child labor to make many of the items that are available for sale right here in the United States. For all you 7th and 8th graders, if you can remember back to your fair trade chocolate project in sixth grade, you will definitely connect with Gopal and this frightening issue of child labor. It definitely made me think again about the things I buy.
--Ms. Bell