The novel Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys does an excellent job of illustrating the troubling issue of child labor. The extent of child labor in a country is directly linked to the nature and extent of poverty there. Child labor deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity. This harms physical and mental development. Today, there are an estimated 246 million child workers worldwide. This irritating social problem not only violates national minimum age laws, it also involves intolerable abuses, such as child slavery, child trafficking, debt bondage, forced labor and illicit activities . In Between Shades of Grey, Lina and her ten-year-old brother are unjustly sentenced to 25 years of labor in a Siberian labor camp. He stopped children from going to school and used them to undermine labor standards. During the harsh winter and even worse living conditions, they watched their mother die of starvation. Throughout early history, a working child was not uncommon; they took jobs as messengers, apprentices and women...