Trash (2010)

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Three boys live with hundreds of other families beside a city’s mountainous garbage dumpsite. Their days are spent picking through trash for something to use, something to sell, or something to eat. One day their lives change forever after one of them finds a bag that contains a wallet, a key, and a map.

A compelling dystopian story with a suspenseful mystery at its center. ( )

In a future society, many kids must dig through trash each day, hoping to scavenge enough material to buy dinner. What if one finds something the police want? Would that change their lives for the better, or just make them a target? An interesting book for dystopia fans. ( )

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/photography/8063624/Where-children-sleep.html... ( )

I've seen lots of reviews (not to mention the book's own jacket copy) that call this a near-future dystopia, or say it's set in an unspecified Latin American country. It's neither. The country is pretty clearly the Philippines (it's not specified, exactly, but it's not hidden either). And, unfortunately, this ain't the future -- here's an article about this exact situation in Manila and another in Cambodia.

The writing is spare and unsettling, and deals with issues that won't be familiar to most young readers -- not just the families living on trash heaps, but complex and terrifying political corruption and police brutality. The fact that it feels like the science fiction dystopias that are popular now might ironically make it feel more accessible.


Except, of course, that this ends "happily" the way [a:Paolo Bacigalupi|1226977|Paolo Bacigalupi|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1278742221p2/1226977.jpg]'s [b:Drowned Cities|12814594|The Drowned Cities (Ship Breaker, #2)|Paolo Bacigalupi|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1333712780s/12814594.jpg|13677912] does: our protagonists get a one in a billion lucky break, but unlike in your typical YA dystopian novel, there's no third book in the trilogy where the protagonist saves the world. This is our world, and we need to figure that part out ourselves.
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