Dog’s Eye View Media proudly presents a true-life story straight from today’s headlines.  Shelley Seale’s narrative non-fiction book follows the lives of just such children as those brought to life in the movie Slumdog Millionaire. The Weight of Silence: Invisible Children of India depicts Shelley’s journey into orphanages and through the streets and slums of India where millions of innocent children live without families.

Slumdog Millionaire is a fictional movie ending with a bizarre twist of fate. However, the reality of the story is that for millions of children in India, the life portrayed in the movie continues beyond the rags-to-riches ending of the film. Today there are 25 million Indian children living without parents, on the streets or in orphanages or other institutional homes – some good, and some bad or corrupt like that portrayed in the movie. Many of these children become victims of trafficking, prostitution and child labor. Slumdog Millionaire shows us a side of India, and a way of life, that hundreds of thousands of children in Mumbai alone struggle to survive every day.

During her three years of writing The Weight of Silence, Shelley has befriended and told the stories of many such children – and has born witness to their struggles first hand. Little did she know how much they would change her life. Their hope and resilience amazed Shelley time and time again; the ability of their spirits to overcome crippling challenges inspired her. Even in the most deprived circumstances they are still kids – they laugh and play, perhaps far less frequently than others; they develop strong bonds and relationships to create family where none exists; and most of all they have an enormous amount of love to give. Foreword by Joan Collins, with endorsements by Geralyn Dreyfous (Executive Producer of Born Into Brothels), Dominique Lapierre (Author of City of Joy), Save The Children, Human Rights Watch and more. Order the book from weightofsilence.wordpress.com and receive an autographed copy and bookmark!

“Amidst the growing prosperity of India, there is an entire generation of parentless children growing up. They are everywhere. They fill the streets, the railway stations, the shanty villages. Some scrounge through trash for newspapers, rags or anything they can sell at traffic intersections. Others, often as young as two or three years old, beg. Many are homeless, overflowing orphanages and other institutional homes to live on the streets where they are extremely vulnerable to being trafficked into child labor if they’re lucky, brothels if they’re not. They are invisible children; their plight goes virtually unnoticed, their voices silenced. The Weight of Silence: Invisible Children of India is a non-fiction narrative that gives a strong and hopeful voice to its most vulnerable citizens. The stories told in this book do not belong to me. They were given to me as a gift, often because I was the only person who had ever asked.”