Books with author Deborah Ellis

She heard the woman's boots walk away down the hall. She stood and waited, listening hard to see if the boots would come back. When she was sure she was alone, the girl finally spoke. 'Yes,' she whispered. 'My name is Parvana.' Fifteen-year-old Parvana has built a new life with her family, and it's the life she's always dreamt of. She's learning in a real school, and teaching too. But this is Afghanistan, and the war is far from over. Many still view the education and freedom of women with suspicion and fear. And that means Parvana - and her family - are in danger. When she's taken away by American soldiers, suspected of being a terrorist, Parvana must find a way to protect her family, and keep her hope alive.

A sequel to The Breadwinner, this novel tells the story of Parvana's journey once she leaves Kabul to search for her family. The Taliban still controls Afghanistan, but Kabul is in ruins, Parvana's father has died, and her mother, sister and brother could be anywhere in the country. Parvana doesn't know where they are. She just knows she has to find them. Parvana is twelve now, but she sets out alone, masquerading as a boy. Her journey becomes even more perilous when war breaks out, though she doesn't know why the bombs are falling. In her search for shelter and food as she makes her way across the desolate Afghan countryside, she meets other children who are strays from the war -- an infant boy in a bombed-out village; a nine-year-old girl who believes she has magical powers over landmines; and a boy with one leg who is so obnoxious that Parvana can hardly stand him. The children travel together because it is easier than being alone. And, as they forge their own family in the war zone that Afghanistan has become, their resilience, imagination and luck help them to survive.

Shauzia has a dream. She dreams of getting away from the refugee camp in Pakistan and travelling to France. There she knows she would find a better life, away from the war in her home country of Afghanistan . . . But escape is not so easy. Once she leaves the camp, she has no money, no food—and only her dog Jasper for company. But Shauzia is determined to find a new future for herself . . .

Shauzia has a dream. She dreams of getting away from the refugee camp in Pakistan and travelling to France. There she knows she would find a better life, away from the war in her home country of Afghanistan . . . But escape is not so easy. Once she leaves the camp, she has no money, no food—and only her dog Jasper for company. But Shauzia is determined to find a new future for herself . . .

Over two million copies of The Breadwinner Trilogy sold worldwide Eleven - year - old Parvana lives with her family in one room of a bombed - out apartment building in Kabul, Afghanistan's capital city. Parvana's father - a history teacher until his school was bombed and his health destroyed - works from a blanket on the ground in the marketplace, reading letters for people who cannot read or write. One day, he is arrested for the crime of having a foreign education, and the family is left wihtout someone who can earn money or even shop for food. As conditions for the family grow desperate, only one solution emerges. Forbidden to earn money as a girl, Parvana must transform herself into a boy, and become the breadwinner. The Breadwinner is a novel about loyalty, survival, families and friendship under extraordinary circumstances.

Diamond Willow Award nominee, 2008 Silver Birch Fiction shortlist, 2007 CLA Children's Book of the Year Award 2008 shortlist VOYA's Top Shelf Fiction for Middle School Readers list, 2007 Hackmatack Children's Choice Book Award nominee, 2008-2009 Jake and his sister Shoshona have been under foster care since their single mother was arrested for possession and trafficking three years before. Both have found their own ways to cope: Shoshona has become a bossy mother figure; Jake, who is a budding comic book artist, has created an alter ego named Jakeman. And unbeknownst to his sister, Jake continues his one-man letter-writing campaign to the Governor, pleading for clemency for their mom. Along with an assortment of nervous, angry, and damaged kids, Jake and Shoshona take a community-provided school bus four times a year on the long overnight journey through New York State to visit their mother in jail. This time will be like no other trip they've ever taken. Their adult chaperones contract food poisoning on the way back and must be dropped off at a hospital. And their driver, refusing to wait for another adult to replace their chaperones, sets off again with only the kids and a hidden bottle of booze in tow. In no time they are off the main highway and lost. And their driver, now staggering drunk, abandons the kids and walks off, leaving them in the middle of nowhere. Angry and sick to death of a system that has deserted them at every turn, Shoshana takes the wheel. And through a series of crazy side trips, Jake and the others hatch a plan to visit the Governor's mother. And when the old lady sees that her son has dismissed Jake's appeals and refused to even reply, she helps them face off with the Governor himself. Jake and the others find themselves at a photo opportunity that ends in tragedy even as it gives the long-abandoned kids a forum to be heard at long last.

The Breadwinner The first book in Deborah Ellis’s riveting Breadwinner series is an award-winning novel about loyalty, survival, families and friendship under extraordinary circumstances during the Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan.Parvana’s JourneyA war is raging in Afghanistan as a coalition of Western forces tries to oust the Taliban by bombing the country. Parvana’s father has died, and her mother, sister and brother have gone to a faraway wedding, not knowing what has happened to the father. Parvana doesn’t know where they are. She just knows she has to find them.Mud CityParvana’s best friend, Shauzia, has escaped the misery of her life in Kabul, only to end up in a refugee camp in Pakistan. But she still dreams of seeing the ocean and eventually making a new life in France. This is the dream that has sustained her through the terrible years in Kabul. It is the dream for which she has forsaken family and friends.My Name Is ParvanaIn this stunning sequel to The Breadwinner Trilogy, Parvana, now fifteen, is found in a bombed-out school and held as a suspected terrorist by American troops in Afghanistan.

Orphaned and plagued with the grief of losing everyone he loves, 15-year-old Abdul has made a long, fraught journey from his war-torn home in Baghdad, only to end up in The Jungle — a squalid, makeshift migrant community in Calais, France. He takes a spot in a small, overloaded boat heading to England and full of other illegal migrants — and a secret stash of heroin. A sudden skirmish leaves the boat stalled in the middle of the Channel, the pilot dead, and four young people remaining — Abdul, Rosalia, a Romani girl who has escaped from the white slave trade, Cheslav, gone AWOL from a Russian military school, and Jonah, the boat pilot’s ten-year-old nephew. The story of their frantic and hazardous Channel crossing makes this a novel of high adventure and heart-stopping suspense.

The Breadwinner brings to life an issue that has recently exploded in the international media — the reality of life under the Taliban. Young Parvana lives with her family in one room of a bombed-out apartment building in Kabul, Afghanistan. Because he has a foreign education, her father is arrested by the Taliban, the religious group that controls the country. Since women cannot appear in public unless covered head to toe, or go to school, or work outside the home, the family becomes increasingly desperate until Parvana conceives a plan. She cuts her hair and disguises herself as a boy to earn money for her family. Parvana’s determination to survive is the force that drives this novel set against the backdrop of an intolerable situation brought about by war and religious fanaticism. Deborah Ellis spent several months talking with women and girls in Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan and Russia. This suspenseful, timely novel is the result of those encounters. Royalties from the sale of The Breadwinner will go toward educating Afghan girls in Pakistani refugee camps. “...a potent portrait of life in contemporary Afghanistan, showing that powerful heroines can survive even in the most oppressive ... conditions.” — Booklist

She heard the woman's boots walk away down the hall. She stood and waited, listening hard to see if the boots would come back. When she was sure she was alone, the girl finally spoke. 'Yes,' she whispered. 'My name is Parvana.' Fifteen-year-old Parvana has built a new life with her family, and it's the life she's always dreamt of. She's learning in a real school, and teaching too. But this is Afghanistan, and the war is far from over. Many still view the education and freedom of women with suspicion and fear. And that means Parvana - and her family - are in danger. When she's taken away by American soldiers, suspected of being a terrorist, Parvana must find a way to protect her family, and keep her hope alive.

In a rehabilitation center for disabled children, twelve-year-old Nora says she loves the color pink and chewing gum and explains that the wheels of her wheelchair are like her legs. Eleven-year-old Mohammad describes how his house was demolished by soldiers. And we meet twelve-year-old Salam, whose older sister walked into a store in Jerusalem and blew herself up, killing herself and two people, and injuring twenty others. All these children live both ordinary and extraordinary lives. They argue with their siblings. They dream about their wishes for the future. They have also seen their homes destroyed, their families killed, and they live in the midst of constant upheaval and violence. This simple and telling book allows children everywhere to see those caught in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as children just like themselves, but who are living far more difficult, dangerous lives.

Shortlisted for the SYRCA 2013 Diamond Willow Award, selected as an American Library Association 2012 Notable Children's Book, a Booklist Editors’ Choice, nominated for the OLA Golden Oak Tree Award, and a finalist for the Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Book Awards: Young Adult/Middle Reader Award, the Governor General's Literary Awards: Children's Text and the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year for Children Award There’s not much that upsets young Valli. Even though her days are spent picking coal and fighting with her cousins, life in the coal town of Jharia, India, is the only life she knows. The only sight that fills her with terror are the monsters who live on the other side of the train tracks -- the lepers. Valli and the other children throw stones at them. No matter how hard her life is, she tells herself, at least she will never be one of them. Then she discovers that she is not living with family after all, that her "aunt" was a stranger who was paid money to take Valli off her own family’s hands. She decides to leave Jharia . . . and so begins a series of adventures that takes her to Kolkata, the city of the gods. It’s not so bad. Valli finds that she really doesn’t need much to live. She can "borrow" the things she needs and then pass them on to people who need them more than she does. It helps that though her bare feet become raw wounds as she makes her way around the city, she somehow feels no pain. But when she happens to meet a doctor on the ghats by the river, Valli learns that she has leprosy. Despite being given a chance to receive medical care, she cannot bear the thought that she is one of those monsters she has always feared, and she flees, to an uncertain life on the street.