Born Behind Bars

Love this story so much!<br /><br />If you want to read a really good middle grade book about survival and acceptance, get this one!<br /><br />Chapters are short. Characters are good. The plot is okay but I feel things are a bit too convenient for the child main characters. <br /><br />Also, I want to know more about the mother, the grandparents and Rani as well. <br /><br />But yes, a book full of positivity and hope.

Kabir does not know a world outside the Chennai, India prison he was born in. His Amma was falsely accused of theft by her employers before he was born. The prison administration suddenly realizes he has aged out and must be released. An uncle comes forward to claim Kabir, but are they really related? Drastic steps have to be taken when it looks like he will be exchanging one prison for another. Will he be able to find his real family? How can he get his Amma released? What happened to his appa? As with <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/40206380.The_Bridge_Home" title="The Bridge Home by Padma Venkatraman" rel="noopener">The Bridge Home</a>, we see children fending for themselves on the street. There are also scenes that depict the conflicts between those who are Hindu and those who are Muslim as well as the significance of the regional languages. This is a heartwarming read and filled with hope. The narrative is structured with short chapters and paragraphs making it a quick read that satisfies the soul.

Wonderful and heartwarming story about Kabir, a young boy who has only known life in jail because his mom was wrongfully imprisoned before he was born. At a certain age he is forced to leave prison and has to survive on his own in the world. He meets Rani, a young Roma girl, who takes him under her wing and together they look for Kabir's family. I loved learning a bit about the caste system, the justice (or lack of it) system in India, the tension between Muslims and Hindus, the water crisis and so many other areas of life in India. I would recommend this on audio.

<b>March 12, 2021:</b> <i>"following a boy who is released onto the streets of Chennai, India to fend for himself after spending his whole life in jail with his innocent mother"</i> This is going to be heart-wrenching, I can already feel it.

Another middle grade masterpiece from Padma Venkatraman! Sweet, lovable main characters you will forever root for against a corrupt caste system. CW for incarceration, child trafficking, castes, racism, xenophobia (Hindu vs. Muslim) and parental death.

First of all... the cover of this book is gorgeous. Probably one of my favorite Middle Grade covers of all time! When this book 1st started, I wasn't feeling it as much as I expected that I would. Kabir was born in jail to a mother who was imprisoned for stealing (even though it wasn't a crime she actually committed). The parts in jail were not my favorite, but as soon as Kabir left the prison and found his new friend, Rani, I LOVED it. She was the best character!

Kabir has been in jail since the day he was born, his mother serving time for a crime she didn't commit. What will he do when he's unexpectedly released to the streets of Chennai, India once he's nine years old?

When she was pregnant with him, Kabir Khan's mother was accused of a crime she did not commit and put into a Chennai jail where he was born. He has lived there since that day, in a cell with several other women besides his mother. Small for his age, no one paid much attention to Kabir until the new warden decides that at age 9, he is old enough to be released. Before he goes, his teacher at the prison school tries her best to prepare him for the outside world, as do his cellmates. <br /><br />On the day of his release, Kabir is picked up by a man who says he is his uncle. But it doesn't take long for him to realize that the man is not a relative and that he plans to sell Kabir. Using his wits, Kabir manages to escape and in the process he meets Rani, a Kurava (Roma) girl a few years older than him and living on the streets with her pet parrot. <br /><br />Rani take Kabir under her wing, teaching him how to survive on the streets, educating him on India's caste system that makes low caste people like them invisible to others. Together, they manage to earn money for food - Rani tells fortunes and Kabir sings. Kabir knows all about his father and how much his dad loved his mother, but his father never told his parents about his wife before he left for Dubai because she is Hindu and Kabir's father's family are Muslim. Now, Kabir is determined to go to Bengaluru to find his grandparents. <br /><br />A stroke of good luck and Kabir's strong sense of honesty enables him to get enough money to buy train tickets to Bengaluru for him and Rani. Sadly, they face caste discrimination buying the tickets and riding the train, but also kindness of strangers helping them. In Bengaluru, they find the mosque that the Khan family worships at and follow a man to his business thinking he might be a relative of Kabir's. But when fighting over water breaks out, Rani manages to help the man save his business. In return, he posts their pictures on social media and luck is once again on Kabir's side. His grandparents see the post and manage to find him and Rani. Soon, Kabir finally has new, clean clothes, enough to eat, a room of his own and he even makes another friend who teaches him how to play cricket. Rani, who hates being confined indoors, is introduced to a woman who runs a school that allows her to live in a tent of her own with her parrot, and get an education. The woman also knows lawyers who may be able to get Kabir's mother released so that they can be reunited. <br /><br />Born Behind Bars is told in chapters that consist of short paragraphs and that are narrated entirely from Kabir's open, honest, observant perspective. Though his eyes, readers learn what jail is like for the women and children who are incarcerated there, and also what life on the streets is like for so many children in India. Kabir's story is a nice mix of good and bad things happening to both him and Rani as Venkatraman explores themes of poverty, tolerance and intolerance of religious and caste differences, justice and injustice, loss and revelation. I also think it may be surprising for young American readers to realize that children can find themselves alone in the world on the streets of India and that it isn't just a thing of the past. <br /><br />But is Kabir's luck too good to be true? I wondered that as I read the book and perhaps the story focused on the upshot of his good luck rather than the alternatives. Think what could have been if his fraudulent uncle has managed to sell this plucky, hopeful boy into what would have amounted to slavery.<br /><br />I have always enjoyed reading Padma Venkatraman's novels set in India and this is no exception. The writing is beautiful, the story is poignant, and Kabir is a character you won't soon forget. He is honest, with an engaging sense of humor regarding his circumstances (I loved his private nicknames for the women with whom he shared his jail cell) and the challenges he faces on a daily basis. It is, in short, an enlightening, compelling novel.<br /><br />This book is recommended for readers age 9+<br />This book was an eARC gratefully received from NetGalley.com

Padma Venkatraman’s BORN BEHIND BARS is the story of Kabir Khan, a boy in India who was born in prison. When he reaches an age in which children are no longer allowed to remain in prison with their mothers, he is transferred to a so-called relative, a False Uncle, from whom he escapes. Using his own wit, he finds friends (e.g., Rani) and other relatives, all the while learning to acculturate to a ‘free’ society.<br /><br />This book highlights the issues that many children around the world—including the United States—face after being born to imprisoned mothers. However, it also forces readers to learn about inequalities in all countries. While many people are familiar with the caste system in India and call it abhorrent, those same inequalities found within the caste system (including violence, discrimination, and unfair imprisonment) can also be found within the US and how people for centuries have viewed and identified “race.”<br /><br />Venkatraman did a fantastic job of structuring this story and was careful to show readers that there is a lot of diversity in how Indians view otherness. One of the ways that she did this was by naming her MC after ‘Saint Kabir’, a 15th century poet and mystic, whom both Hindus and Muslims revere. The author explained how Kabir (the saint) tried to bring both groups together as one while at the same time decrying the caste system.<br /><br />This novel is beautifully written and would be an excellent teaching tool for both parents and school teachers.

<b>Born Behind Bars | Padma Venkatraman | 03Jan2022</b><br>-------------------------<br><b>One-Sentence Review</b><br><i>Simplistic and short yet subtle and structured.</i><br>---------------------------<br><u>Published/Pages</u> : 07Sep2021 | 272 pages<br><u>Location</u>: Chennai (Tamil Nadu), Bengaluru (Karnataka)<br><u>Genre</u>: Realistic Fiction, Middle Grade<br><i>TW: homelessness, child labor, hints of child traffiking, religious xenophobia</i><br><br><u>Characters</u>: Kabir Khan, Rani, Amma, Grandma Knife, Mouse Girl, Malli, Aunty Cloud, Bedi Ma'am, Jai (Parrot)<br>-------------------------------<br><b> <u>Rating Analysis</u> </b><br><br><i>Premise: 8/10<br>Introduction: 8/10<br>Number of Characters: 7/10<br>Character Development: 8/10<br>Backup History for the Story: 8/10<br>Fiction Quality: 7/10<br>Pace of the Story: 8/10<br>Dramatic Effect: 7/10<br>Climax: 7/10<br>Impact it Made: 7/10</i><br><br><b>TOTAL: 75/100</b> (7.5 Stars = 3.75 Stars ~ ★★★★)<br>--------------------------------<br><b> <u>Review</u> </b><br><b> <blockquote>"Beyond the bars, framed by the high, square window, slides a small patch of sky. For months, it's been as gray as the faded paint flaking off the walls, but today it's blue and gold. Bright as a happy song. My thoughts, always eager to escape, shoot out and try to picture the whole sky--even the whole huge world. But my imagination has many missing pieces, like the jigsaw puzzle in the schoolroom. All I've learned here in nine years from my mother and my teachers is not enough to fill the gaps."</blockquote> </b> Padma Venkatraman could have been a surgeon, if she choose to! The way she manages to skillfully dissect the human emotional existence and then manage to sew it back with threads of social reality with the nimblest of fingers, all while keeping the patient (aka the characters) alive and well, is a measure of excellence. Not to mention that these characters are almost always children - those with a throbbing will to survive.<br><br>This story, according to the epilogue, is actually thematically inspired by a real life tale of a boy born in the prison where his mother was wrongly imprisoned and then how he gets out and faces the world at the tender age of 9 or 10. But, mind you, Ms. Venkatraman manages to take this germ of a thought and craft a tale full of heart, hope, and humility.<br><br>Having read Ms. Venkatraman's <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/40206380.The_Bridge_Home" title="The Bridge Home by Padma Venkatraman" rel="noopener">The Bridge Home</a> and being bowled by its beautifully sketched characters, I certainly went into this expecting to have my heart-strings pulled - and I wasn't disappointed. Kabir and Rani are the very embodiment of resilience that kids can have, especially those who are thrown into a life of hardships which many times even the grown-ups find tricky to manage. The author successfully manages to create these characters without making them pitiful or desperate given their situation, but in turn gives them the agency to tread this treacherous path while maintaining their innocence. There are moments of mirth and nuggets of novelty that these kids experience as they experience life on these streets. But nowhere does the author romanticize their reality. We are always kept aware of their stark reality and how dangerous things can be at any given moment.<br><br>This book tries to talk about a lot of things. Incarcerated parents, mothers especially, who give birth in the prison and somehow manage to raise their kids in those confines. The life of these kids who really don't know the world outside the prison cell. The transition that these kids have to do from being thrown into that real world at tender ages without any guidance or support, being separated from their mothers who really were their sole source of support all their life. Street kids and their need to survive on a day-to-day basis, where they are constantly at a threat by animals and humans alike (the later probably the worst one), and how they somehow manage to find a way to make their ends meet. On top of that, we have religious turmoil since Kabir is half Hindu, half Muslim and sociological challenges that are faced by people living in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka over the sharing of water, the two states featured in this story.<br><br>These are questions that need deeper discussions and assessments - this book does not try to solve them. But somewhere I thought it got a little too muddled with all these things and resolutions for Kabir's story came through a little too simplistically. We are never really pushed to the edge of the dangers of his life through all his and how he would have survived in those situations. I would have appreciated a little more depth to Kabir's reality, even at the expense of some of the aforementioned issues (which is not to say that they are not important!), because that would have shown a more vulnerable side to Kabir's truth. <br><br>But there is a lot to love here, a lot to root for. Kabir's life, his connections to people inside and outside the prison, and how he learns to adapt is nothing short of heart-warming. One wants to hug him for his innocence, and applaud him for his resilience. And we get someone of the best supporting characters in Rani, Grandma Knife, Bedi Ma'am, and best of all, Jai, the parrot!<br><br>Ms. Venkatraman is a driving force in Middle Grade literature and I hope these stories create the necessary conversation and hopefully solutions, because these characters exist in the world today. These stories do not exist in a phantasmagorical bubble but are happening as we speak. Hopefully, every child get to experience their patch of sky not through their tiny sky square of their confinement, but through the vastness of their flight. <br><br><b>Reaction Section</b><br><img src="https://images.gr-assets.com/hostedimages/1641340180ra/32405898.gif" width="400" height="200" alt="description" class="gr-hostedUserImg" loading="lazy">