By Ann Braden
A seventh-grader raising her little siblings in poverty, learning she's allowed to take up space.
Zoey has bigger things to worry about than school. Every afternoon she is the one getting her three younger siblings fed and to bed while her mom works late at the pizza place, in a cramped house that belongs to her mom's boyfriend. She has learned to make herself invisible, like an octopus blending into a rock. Then a teacher pushes her to join the debate team, and Zoey starts to wonder what would happen if she stopped hiding.
This is the top of the trail, the one that trusts an older child with the full weight of what poverty can cost. Zoey isn't only poor. She's parenting her siblings, walking on eggshells around a controlling grown-up, and so used to going without that she's stopped expecting anything for herself. What makes it bearable is watching her slowly figure out that her voice matters. A child who reads this comes away understanding, from the inside, a life that may be nothing like their own, or one that is exactly like it.