Born Behind Bars by Padma Venkatraman

Born in a Pandemic, a Children’s Novel Tackles the Broken Justice System

In 2013, multi-award-winning author Padma Venkatraman read an article about Kanhaiya Kumari who had been born in prison in India. When he was too old to remain there, he was sent out into the world alone without his mother. She never forgot about that boy.

“When the pandemic hit,” Venkatraman wrote on librarian, educator, and writer John Schu’s blog, “I returned to a draft of [a young boy’s] story that I had written and set aside. As the world entered a ‘lockdown’ I was drawn to this character who had spent his whole life locked up … I wrote and rewrote during the pandemic.”

The result is Born Behind Bars, the powerful and instructive middle-grade companion novel to her fourth book, The Bridge Home. She continues to explore child homelessness; families of choice and birth; and caste, religious, and cultural differences. But this time, she also examines a prejudicial and broken justice system and how it affects children. [Read the full review here]