"The Prison Runner," Deborah Ellis, OUP; 2008; 190 pp.

A wobbly tooth, a favorite library book that has been lent out to someone else — these are the sorts of problems that children should be growing up with. But life isn't the same everywhere, and in developing countries such as Bolivia, children grow up too fast to have a real childhood. Like Diego, the 12-year-old hero of Deborah Ellis' "The Prison Runner."

For Diego, the San Sebastian Women's Prison in Cochabamba is home. This is where he lives, in a tiny prison cell crammed between many other tiny prison cells. Diego's parents have been arrested on a false rap for cocaine- smuggling; now his father lives in the men's prison, and he lives with his mother and his 3-year-old sister Corina in the women's jail. Life is hard — too hard. His mother unravels old sweaters that Diego fetches from the secondhand market, washes the wool, and makes new woolen items to sell. Diego makes extra money as a "taxi," ferrying letters and running errands for prisoners.