children's choirs

Twelve-year-old Tia lives in a white slum in New Orleans with her mother, and her whole world revolves around singing in the gospel choir with her best friend, Keisha--but when practice is interrupted by a shooting outside the church, and a baby is killed, Tia finds that she cannot sing, and she is forced to confront her feelings about her incarcerated father who killed a girl in a failed robbery years before.

Tells the story of Given Kachepa, a young man from the African nation of Zambia who was chosen at the age of eleven by a missionary group to become part of a choir touring the United States, only to find himself a victim of human trafficking, and who has made it his job to educate people about the problem since being rescued by the Immigration and Naturalization Service and placed in a foster home.