It never works. And you just have to know that going in and never kid yourself that it has shifted. Now in her 20s, Dasani became the first in her immediate family to graduate high school, and she enrolled in classes at LaGuardia Community College. Dasani places the bottle in the microwave and presses a button. Hidden in a box is Dasanis pet turtle, kept alive with bits of baloney and the occasional Dorito. She attacked the mice. We're in a new century. I think she feels that the book was able to go to much deeper places and that that's a good thing. She saw this ad in a glossy magazine while she was, I believe, at a medical clinic. They spend their days in school, their nights in the shelter. And so putting that aside, what really changed? Clothing donations. They were put in a situation where things were out of their control. The only way to do this is to leave the room, which brings its own dangers. So Bed-Stuy, East New York. This is an extract from Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in New York City by Andrea Elliott (Hutchinson Heinemann, 16.99). Mice scurry across the floor. At one point, one, I think it was a rat, actually bit baby Lele, the youngest of the children, and left pellets all over the bed. Roaches crawl to the ceiling. You have piano lessons and tutoring and, of course, academics and all kinds of athletic resources. Offering a rare look into how homelessness directs the course of a life, New York Times writer and Pulitzer Prize winner Andrea Elliott was allowed to follow Dasani's family for almost 10 years. Invisible Child She could go anywhere. Her parents survived major childhood traumas. How long is she in that shelter? And, you know, I think that there's, in the prose itself, tremendous, you know, I think, sort of, ethical clarity and empathy and humanization. INVISIBLE CHILD | Kirkus Reviews She loved to sit on her windowsill. But I don't think it's enough to put all these kids through college. Here in the neighbourhood, the homeless are the lowest caste, the outliers, the shelter boogies. And so I have seen my siblings struggle for decades with it and have periods of sobriety and then relapse. Yeah. She felt that they were trying to make her, sort of, get rid of an essential part of herself that she was proud of. I would be off in the woods somewhere writing and I would call her. Until then, Dasani considered herself a baby expert. Criminal justice. Andrea Elliott: Yeah. For a time, she thrived there. There are parts of it that are painful. Then she sets about her chores, dumping the mop bucket, tidying her dresser, and wiping down the small fridge. Chanel always says, "Blood is thicker than water." Nine years ago, my colleague Andrea Elliott set out to report a series of stories about what it was like to be a homeless child in New York City. In Fort Greene alone, in that first decade, we saw the portion of white residents jump up by 80%. Their sister is always first. The west side of Chicago is predominantly Black and Latino and very poor. Tweet us with the hashtag #WITHpod, email WITHpod@gmail.com. Every once in a while, it would. So this was the enemy. And it is something that I think about a lot, obviously, because I'm a practitioner as well. So it was strange to her. What's your relationship with her now and what's her reaction to the book?