Libertad by Alma Fullerton

Two children, Libertad and Julio, live with their mother at the edge of a garbage dump in Guatemala City. Every day, they work collecting cardboard to sell. When an accident kills their mother, they decide to find their father who went to the United States five years earlier. A moving account told in verse novel format and based on the journey of a real boy, combined with other children's actual experiences. Grade 4 to 8.

Similar stories about working children in other parts of the contemporary world:

Iqbal (carpet weavers in Pakistan) by Francesco D'Adamo

I Am a Taxi (children of incarcerated parents in Bolivia) and The Breadwinner (a girl disguised as a boy supports her family in Afghanistan), both by Deborah Ellis

Similar verse novels:

Home of the Brave (An orphaned young Sudanese refugee) by Katherine Applegate

Downtown Boy (Chicano child of migrant workers in 1950s California) by Juan Felipe Herrera

Similar story of illegal immigrants to the U.S.A.:

Red Glass by Laura Resau