I was walking back from my playgroup with my son on Monday, I came out of an elevator to find a teenage boy waiting for me. Fear and an urge to protect my son came over me as he looked a little "rough" around the edges.

Instead of pulling a knife or picking a fight though, the teenager turned on me with big, embarrassed, doe-eyes to ask in a quivering voice, "Excuse me, can I please have fifty cents to call my mum?" I fished out fifty cents worth of coins and left as soon as I saw him head towards the telephone, not waiting around to see if he got through to her. True story.

Unwind by Neal Shusterman is a novel about a world gone mad in which children between the ages of thirteen and eighteen can be legally signed over by their parents or guardians to be put through a harvest camp so that others can take their organs, tissue and blood.

Abortion is also illegal but people can leave infants on other people's doorstep as a method of "storking" and thus legally handing over their responsibilities of the child.

A common phrase used throughout this book is, "Someone else's problem." This encompasses the spirit of the book and is said often by adults who have had children fall temporarily into their hemisphere and require dealing with. There are very few adults in this book who do more than the bare minimum of what they have to do to sit right in their conscience and there's a whole bevy of others who don't do that much.

Connor, one of the trio of main protagonists and an indisputable Christ metaphor, is a "problem" child. His parents are at a loss as to how to handle his behavioral problems and his poor grades so they consign him to being unwound. Risa, a ward of the state, is a bed that the government can free up for a child that they can't legally unwind yet and so is also handed over to the harvesting camp. Levi, the last of the trio is a religious tithe by his parents - born and raised to serve God by handing him over to be tithed as part of their duty to the community and God.

There are many other such stories in this book from a boy whose loving parents died, leaving him an inheritance that his aunt feels would be better off putting her kids through college once he's been unwound and a boy whose divorcing parents couldn't agree on any custody solution and would rather, literally, divide him.

This whole book is about the powerlessness of children in the hands of those who should be responsible for them. It is at times nerve-wracking, heartbreaking, devastating and a complete adrenaline rush.

What it is most of all, though, is sad. Sad because the truth is that children are not the problem and they shouldn't be treated like a problem. They are a symptom at worst and a blessing always. They are a gift that requires attention. They are an innocent package and in the case of 99% of them - if they are running around the street as twelve year olds being a menace to society then they have not let us down - we have let them down.

I love this book because it is well written, I love this book because it is compelling. I love this book because sometimes it is a hard and challenging read on a personal level. I love this book because it asks you to think. I love this book for the many things it has revealed about me - most of them not positive. I love this book because it is well-written with absorbing characters and a great plot.

Most of all, I love this book because next time I come across a kid of the street asking for fifty cents to call his mum, I'll let him borrow my phone and make sure she's coming to get him.