Author Description

Product Description Shyima Hall was born in Egypt on September 29, 1989, the seventh child of desperately poor parents. When she was eight, her parents sold her into slavery. Shyima then moved two hours away to Egypt's capitol city of Cairo to live with a wealthy family and serve them eighteen hours a day, seven days a week. When she was ten, her captors moved to Orange County, California, and smuggled Shyima with them. Two years later, an anonymous call from a neighbor brought about the end of Shyima's servitude-but her journey to true freedom was far from over. A volunteer at her local police department since she was a teenager, Shyima is passionate about helping to rescue others who are in bondage. Now a U.S. citizen, she regularly speaks out about human trafficking and intends to one day become an immigration officer. In Hidden Girl, Shyima candidly reveals how she overcame her harrowing circumstances and brings vital awareness to a timely and relevant topic. From School Library Journal Gr 7 Up—Shyima Hall was born in Egypt in 1989 and sold into slavery by her parents when she was eight years old. Here she tells her shocking story: one of 11 children in a happy but poverty-stricken family, she was sold as a slave to a wealthy family in Cairo, who smuggled her with them to Orange County, CA. After she was freed from her captors, she was thrust into the foster care system and learned to read and write in English, assimilating into American culture as a teenager. She graduated from high school with dreams of one day becoming either a police officer or immigrations agent; and considers her crowning achievement becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen. Robin Eller gives Hall's narrative no accent; rather, she reads it in a staccato, affected manner. She reserves accents for the dialogue of Hall's parents and captors and does a credible job of expressing the wide range of emotions Hall experiences, showing the self-confidence she gained during her ordeal. To