Book Descriptions
for Asphalt Angels by Ineke Holtwijk
From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
Twenty-three short chapters relate the street life of 13-year-old Alex. They also tell the stories of some of teenagers and children he meets while living on the streets of Rio de Janeiro. Sometimes readers find out how or why certain young people get to the point of sleeping on cardboard, begging, selling their bodies or their souls. The personal stories are no prettier than the street life, reflecting almost countless varieties of violence, sexual abuse and poverty. To youth attempting to survive such situations, it sometimes seems safer to try and survive on the street than at home. Sometimes they form what might be called families in their attempts to stay alive. Their gritty lives are not sensationalized, nor are they glamorized. Holtwijk’s note tells a bit about the shelter for homeless street children where Alex ends up, and he reasons why it can be difficult for street children accustomed to independence to adjust to shelter rules. Not a book for the faint-hearted, this book provides depth to news accounts of communities of street children the world over. (Age 14-18)
CCBC Choices 2000. © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2000. Used with permission.
From the Publisher
A raw, poignant story of a band of Brazilian street kids who survive -- if they can -- by their wits alone. Asphalt Angels centers around a boy named Alex, a street child of 13 in Brazil who has been kicked onto the city streets by his stepfather after his mother dies. He is alone and scared. This is the story of how he adapts to life in the streets with a group of other children. Hazards are everywhere: drug-dealing, theft, glue-sniffing, harassment, brutality, even murder. It is not easy steering clear of them, yet Alex manages to survive, eventually making a home with 14 other boys in a house, working in an office, and attending evening school. This story grew from the real-life drama the author observed while on assignment. In an afterword, she reports that some 10,000 children sleep in Rio's streets, and many more roam them by day, victims of inadequate nutrition, education, and shelter, and prey to drugs and violence. Alex does exist, but under another name.
Publisher description retrieved from Google Books.