Banned Book of the Month: Sold by Patricia McCormick
Photo by Amazon.
This past week, the American Library Association released the most banned or challenged books of 2025. The ALA reported 713 cases of attempts to censor books. The number one most challenged/banned book of 2025 was Sold by Patricia McCormick. Sold was challenged 36 times in 2025, an unfortunate attempt to censor literature.
About the author:
Patricia McCormick has extensive experience in research, and focuses heavily on her findings when writing her novels. She has traveled to India to research brothels, met with Malala Yousafzai to discuss the violence of the Taliban, and spent time in Cambodia to meet with a survivor of the genocide. McCormick’s home base is in New York City, which is where she spends time with her husband and children. McCormick is embellished with a multitude of awards from her success in literature, one of the most notable being the 2002 ALA Best Book of the Year.
Summary:
Sold follows the unfortunate life of Lakshmi, a thirteen year old Nepali girl. Lakshmi lives in a rural mountain village in Nepal with her family. They don’t have much money, and after a monsoon, her family becomes even more destitute. In an attempt to make money, Lakshmi’s dad tells her that she will have to help support her family. He introduces her to a stranger who tells her she’ll live with an older wealthy woman at the “Happiness House.” However, once Lakshmi gets there, she realizes there is more to what she has been told.
The wealthy old woman is named Mumtaz, and she is a cruel brothel owner. Lakshmi’s life has been turned upside down, and everything around her is new and unusual. Lakshmi’s dad sold her into prostitution to make money off her. Mumtaz then tells Lakshmi that she won’t be able to leave the brothel until she pays off her family’s debt, which becomes especially difficult when Mumtaz takes much of the money the prostitutes make. Lakshmi has no choice but to endure this nightmare and make the most of her resources. She makes friends with the other girls in the brothel, steals books to learn how to read and write, and listens to the conversations of people coming to the brothel so that she can learn English.
One day, an unnamed American man comes to the brothel appearing to be a client. While he is at the brothel pretending to be a client, he gathers information and anecdotes from the girls to convict Mumtaz and the other perpetrators at the brothel. The American man eventually gets enough information to arrest Mumtaz and free the girls who have been sold into prostitution. Lakshmi has learned enough English that at the end of the novel, she shares her personal information in English so that the police can understand the severity of her situation. The police realize how young she is, and that she has been trafficked to a country she has no familiarity with.
Why it’s challenged/banned:
Sold was ranked as the number one most banned and challenged book in 2025 for it being a book that covers a relatively taboo subject. Sex work and trafficking is often not content in books, so McCormick’s realistic and subjective writing style makes Sold stand out. Critics of Sold and those who aim to ban it argue that the themes of sexual abuse and trauma make it inappropriate to be kept in school libraries. However, because the book contains sensitive and taboo content, it is a way to educate readers about the horrors of sex slavery and human trafficking. Additionally, McCormick immerses herself in extensive research by meeting with people who have first hand experience and knowledge of these topics. McCormick flew to Nepal and India to interview both victims and perpetrators of brothels and trafficking rings and risked her life putting herself in dangerous situations. The true stories she heard from people during her time researching made her realize that the injustices have to be shared. These stories couldn’t be silenced, and the victims had experiences that needed to be published.
Sold can be found at Pauline Haass Public Library and Hamilton’s Library.
