Heather O'Neill's Lullabies for Little Criminals is a Canadian novel that won particular acclaim when it was released in 2006—in addition to having been nominated for the Governor General's Award for fiction (the highest Canadian recognition for a novel), it won the national Canada Reads competition in 2007.

The novel itself follows the story of Baby, a twelve-year-old girl living in Montreal with her heroin-addicted father, Jules. They often move between neighborhoods in the city and Baby's encounters with various addicts, abused children, and pimps are explored in detail. When Jules comes down with a violent bout of tuberculosis, Baby is placed in a foster home where she encounters children her own age who inspire her to live a life of normalcy. She eventually returns to Jules's custody and things, for a time, go smoothly.

Eventually Jules's struggle with heroin starts to affect Baby's life once more, pushing Baby onto the street and eventually into a professional relationship with the pimp Alphonse, a relationship that goes on to become personal. He eventually takes her virginity, works her with his other girls, and gets her addicted to heroin.

On returning to school (while maintaining her working life), Baby meets a boy her own age named Xavier, who eventually becomes a lover. She is afraid of what will happen when Alphonse finds out, a fear compounded by the fact that his apartment is the only place where they can be alone and have sex. When Alphonse does discover the two, he beats them both, sending Xavier away and taking Baby's heroin. He dies of an overdose the next day.

Free of Alphonse's influence, Baby finds her father in a homeless shelter. He tells her the truth of how her mother died, and they decide to try to put their lives back together while living with one of Jules's cousins in Val des Loups. The novel ends as they arrive.