There Are No Children Here, the true story of brothers Lafeyette and Pharoah Rivers, ages 11 and 9 at the start, brings home the horror of trying to make it in a violence-ridden public housing project. The boys live in a gang-plagued war zone on Chicago"s West Side, literally learning how to dodge bullets the way kids in the suburbs learn to chase baseballs. "If I grow up, I"d like to be a bus driver," says Lafeyette at one point. That"s if, not when--spoken with the complete innocence of a child. The book"s title comes from a comment made by the brothers" mother as she and author Alex Kotlowitz contemplate the challenges of living in such a hostile environment: "There are no children here," she says. "They"ve seen too much to be children." This book humanizes the problem of inner-city pathology, makes readers care about Lafeyette and Pharoah more than they may expect to, and offers a sliver of hope buried deep within a world of chaos.