"Children are bystanders, after all—no more to blame for their poverty than for their very existence." —Andrea Elliott (p. 518)
When New York Times investigative reporter Andrea Elliott set out to cover the city's worsening homeless crisis in 2012, she chose to tell the story through the eyes of a child—one of the voiceless victims of poverty and inequity. Elliott began following 11-year-old Dasani Coates and her family of 10 at the city's Auburn shelter, a dilapidated building ripe with mold and bugs, where incidents of violence and child abuse keep residents on edge.
What started out as a five-part series, "Invisible Child" (which can be read on New York Times' website), morphed into this 500-plus page book that gives educators a heart-wrenching glimpse into the lives of homeless students—and what it's really like to grow up poor and Black in urban America.
Over eight years, Dasani and her seven siblings shuffle between shelters, subsidized housing, and government agencies in a dizzying cycle of hope and despair. At the Susan S. McKinney Secondary School of the Arts in Brooklyn, principal Paula Holmes and teacher Faith Hester—though worn down by their own difficult pasts—prove to be a positive force in Dasani's life. Through fights and suspensions, hunger, and countless school transfers, Dasani (labeled a "shelter boogie" by classmates) finds refuge in Holmes and Hester, two adults who believe in her worth and potential.
A must-read for educators, this Pulitzer prize-winning book reveals the eye-opening conditions that homeless children face—every day—in their struggle for survival.
