Review: The Glass Collector by Anna Perera

The Glass Collector

By: Anna Perera

Pub. Date: March 1, 2012

Publisher: Albert Whitman & Company

Pages: 352

Source: Netgalley

Fifteen-year-old Aaron lives and works amid the garbage piles of Cairo.
His job?
To collect broken glass.
His hope?
To find a future he can believe in.
  Today in Cairo, Egypt, there is a city within a city: a city filled with garbage--literally. As one of the Zabbaleen people, Aaron makes his living sorting through the waste. When his family kicks him out, his only alternatives are to steal, beg, or take the most nightmarish garbage-collecting job of all.
  Anna Perera's richly detailed second young adult novel transports readers to the heartbreaking world of the Zabbaleen.

When I saw The Glass Collector on Netgalley, I requested it right away. I read Anna Perera's other work, Guantanamo Boy, which was a heartbreaking, but very real story, and I knew The Glass Collector was going to be the same.

Aaron is a 15 year old boy who lives with his abusive step family. With no one on his side, he spends his days collecting garbage, mainly glass, so that his stepfather could sell it. He dreams of an education and a better life but no there is no way out of his situation. He's hungry, dirty and lonely. It is a very sad situation, and to think that there are young boys and girls in Cairo dealing with the same things is horrific. We don't realize how much we take for granted until we read something like this.

Despite everything that Aaron has been through and experienced, he is still such a sweet kid. All you want is for his situation to get better, but as the story progresses, it just keeps getting worse.

I love that Perera isn't afraid to speak the truth. She writes about real subjects and doesn't sugar coat anything. She is passionate about what she does, and you can see that in her writing.