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The Breadwinner

Deborah Ellis
Parvana's Journey

Deborah Ellis

In Parvana’s Journey, the Taliban still control Afghanistan, but Kabul is in ruins. Parvana’s father has just died, and her mother, sister, and brother could be anywhere in the country. Parvana knows she must find them. Despite her youth, Parvana sets out alone, masquerading as a boy. She soon meets other children who are victims of war — an infant boy in a bombed-out village, a nine-year-old girl who thinks she has magic powers over landmines, and a boy with one leg. The children travel together, forging a kind of family out of sheer need. The strength of their bond makes it possible to survive the most desperate conditions. Royalties from this book will go toward an education fund for Afghan girls in Pakistani refugee camps.
Mud City

Deborah Ellis

Shauzia is Parvana's friend from The Breadwinner. Now Shauzia has fled from Afghanistan, to a refugee camp in Pakistan. But Shauzia has a dream. She dreams of getting away from the refugee camp 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. This is another deeply moving story from Deborah Ellis, which casts light for readers on the ongoing human situation in Afghanistan.
Off to War: Voices of Soldiers' Children

Deborah Ellis

Deborah Ellis has been widely praised for her books about children in war-torn countries. Now, she turns her attention closer to home, to American and Canadian children whose parents are soldiers fighting — or who have fought — in Afghanistan and Iraq. In frank and illuminating interviews, they talk about how this experience has marked and shaped their lives. Twelve-year-old Darby finds comfort in sending everyday items like Twizzlers and wet wipes to a dad whose life doesn’t include simple pleasures or a daily bath. Now that 10-year-old Mary’s father is home, he sits alone in his bedroom with his computer instead of hanging out with the family like he used to do. Interviewed on military bases, in the streets, in their homes, and over the phone, the children speak with remarkable candor about how war has touched their daily lives, reminding readers that although they may be living safely in North America, children always suffer when nations go to war.
Three Wishes: Palestinian and Israeli Children Speak

Deborah Ellis

Deborah Ellis's enormously popular Breadwinner trilogy recounted the experiences of children living in Afghanistan; now Ellis turns her attention to the young people of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After visiting the region to conduct interviews, she presents their stories here — in their own words. Twelve-year-old Nora, eleven-year-old Mohammad, and many others speak directly about their lives — which prove to be both ordinary and extraordinary: They argue with their siblings. They hate spinach. They have wishes for the future. Yet they have also seen their homes destroyed and families killed, and live amidst constant upheaval and violence.

This simple, telling book allows young readers everywhere to see that the children caught in this conflict are just like them — but living far more difficult and dangerous lives. Without taking sides, it presents an unblinking portrait of children victimized by the endless struggle around them.
I Am a Taxi (The Cocalero Novels)

Deborah Ellis

For twelve-year-old Diego and his family, home is the San Sebastian Women’s Prison in Cochabamba, Bolivia. His parents farmed coca, a traditional Bolivian medicinal plant, until they got caught in the middle of the government’s war on drugs. Diego’s adjusted to his new life. His parents are locked up, but he can come and go: to school, to the market to sell his mother’s hand-knitted goods, and to work as a “taxi," running errands for other prisoners. But then his little sister runs away, earning his mother a heavy fine. The debt and dawning realization of his hopeless situation make him vulnerable to his friend Mando’s plan to make big money, fast. Soon, Diego is deep in the jungle, working as a virtual slave in an illegal cocaine operation. As his situation becomes more and more dangerous, he knows he must take a terrible risk if he ever wants to see his family again.
Sacred Leaf: The Cocalero Novels

Deborah Ellis

The people of Bolivia have grown coca for legitimate purposes for hundreds of years, but the demands of America's War on Drugs now threaten this way of life. Deborah Ellis's searing follow-up to the highly praised I Am a Taxi deals with this frank reality.

After he manages to escape from virtual enslavement in an illegal cocaine operation, Diego is taken in by the Ricardo family. These poor coca farmers give Diego a safe haven where he recovers from his ordeal in the jungle. But the army soon moves in and destroys the family's coca crop — their livelihood. So Diego joins the cocaleros as they protest the destruction of their crops and confront the army head-on by barricading the roads. While tension between the cocaleros and the army builds to a dramatic climax, Diego wonders whether he will ever find a way to return to his family. This compelling novel defies conventional wisdom on an important issue, and shows how people in one part of the world unknowingly create hardship for people in another.
Bifocal

Deborah Ellis, Eric Walters

On the White Ravens' Outstanding New International Books for Children and Young Adults list, 2008
ForeWord Magazine's Book of the Year Awards Bronze Medal Winner (YA Fiction category), 2007
Snow Willow Award nominee, 2008
CCBC's Best Books for Kids & Teens, 2008
Two bestselling authors join forces to write a powerful novel about racism.
A student arrested on suspicions of terrorism. A high school torn apart by racism. Two boys from two different sets of circumstances forced to choose sides.

These are the issues at the heart of Bifocal, a groundbreaking new novel for young-adults.

The story is told from two different points of view. Haroon is a serious student devoted to his family. His grandparents emigrated from Afghanistan. Jay is a football star devoted to his team. He is white.

One day their high school is put on lockdown, and the police arrest a Muslim student on suspicion of terrorist affiliations. He might be guilty. Or is he singled out because of his race?

The entire student body fragments along racial lines and both Haroon and Jay find that their differences initially put them at odds. The Muslim students become targets and a smoke-bomb is set off near their lockers while Jay and his teammates believe they've been set-up to look like racists.

Bifocal is, by no stretch, an easy book. Award-winning authors Deborah Ellis and Eric Walters deliver a serious, hard-hitting book about racism that does not talk down to young people.
The Heaven Shop

Deborah Ellis
There is a lion in our village, and it is carrying away our children.
At her father's funeral, Binti's grandmother utters the words that no one in Malawi wants to hear. Binti's father and her mother before him, dies of AIDS. Binti, her sister, and brother are separated and sent to the home of relatives who can barely tolerate their presence. Ostracized by their extended family, the orphans are treated like the lowest servants. With her brother far away and her sister wallowing in her own sorrow, Binti can hardly contain her rage. She, Binti Phirim, was once a child star of a popular radio program. Now she is scraping to survive. Binti always believed she was special, now she is nothing but a common AIDS orphan.

Binti Phiri is not about to give up. Even as she clings to hope that her former life will be restored, she must face a greater challenge. If she and her brother and sister are to reunited, Binti Phiri will have to look outside herself and find a new way to be special.

Compelling and uplifting, The Heaven Shop, is a contemporary novel that puts a very real face on the African AIDS pandemic, which to-date has orphaned more than 11 million African children. Inspired by a young radio performer the author met during her research visit to Malawi, Binti Phiri is a compelling character that readers will never forget.
Awards and Nominations:
- Ontario Library Association's Golden Oak Award winner 2006
- Winner of the 2005 Jane Addams Children's Book Award in the category of Honor Books for Older Children
- Shortlisted for the 2006 Alberta Children's Choice Book Award
- A Manitoba Young Readers' Choice Awards Honour Book for 2006
- Foreword Magazine 2004 Book of the Year Award finalist
- A Children's Africana Book Awards (CABA) 2005 Honor Book for Older Readers
- A Canadian Children's Book Centre Our Choice 2005
- Ruth & Sylvia Schwartz Children's Book Award for Young Adult/Middle Reader Books finalist
- Red Maple Book Award nominee 2005
El pan de la guerra: The Breadwinner (Libro Tigrillo)

Deborah Ellis

El pan de la guerra (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. Her father, because he has a foreign education, 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.
Breadwinner Collection

Deborah Ellis
Jakeman

Deborah Ellis

Diamond Willow Award nominee, 2008
Silver Birch Fiction shortlist, 2007
CLA Children's Book of the Year Award 2008 shorlist
VOYA's Top Shelf Fiction for Middle School Readers list, 2007
Hackmatack Children's Choice Book Award
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.
Jackal in the Garden: An Encounter With Bihzad

Deborah Ellis

*The first Art Encounters title to feature art outside the Western canon
* Award-winning author
* Multicultural story features a strong female protagonist

Little is known about the fifteenth-century Persian painter Bizhad--we only know that he worked in what is now Afghanistan and Iran, and that he was the first artist to sign his works. Jackal in the Garden imagines Bizhad as an astoundingly gifted dreamer and contrasts him with a strong female protagonist, Anubis, a girl born disfigured into the harem of her vicious father. She must fight for survival--and her struggle leads her to Bizhad and the artists’ colony he leads. Both philosophers, they find common ground. Yet their different attitudes offer a sharp, unusual commentary on life, survival, and art that will resonate with young adult readers seeking their place in the world.
Our Stories, Our Songs: African Children Talk about AIDS

Deborah Ellis
Stories of survival.

Songs of hope.

Children you'll never forget.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, there are more than 11.5 million orphans. The AIDS pandemic has claimed their parents, their aunts, and their uncles. What is life like for these children? Who do they care for, and who cares for them?
Come and meet them. They might surprise you.

Royalties from this book will be donated to UNICEF
Awards and Nominations:
- Winner, Book Link Best Book for the Classroom, 2005
- Winner, School Library Journal Best Book of 2005
- Finalist, 2006 Information Book Award
- Runner-up, National Chapter of Canada IODE Violet Downey Book Award for 2005
- 2006 Children's Literature Roundtables of Canada Information Book Award short list
- 2006 Norma Fleck Award for Canadian Children's Non-Fiction finalist
- Red Maple Award for Non-fiction shortlist, 2007
- Garden State Teen Book Awards nominee 2008
Three Wishes

Deborah Ellis
Children of War: Voices of Iraqi Refugees

Deborah Ellis
Looking for X

Deborah Ellis

Smart and independent, 11-year-old Khyber lives with her mom, Tammy, a former stripper, and her autistic twin brothers in a poor Toronto neighborhood. Though she doesn’t have a lot in common with her classmates, Khyber does have wonderfully eccentric friends: Valerie, Toronto’s meanest waitress, and X, a homeless woman in hiding from “the secret police.” Despite having to deal with pompous social workers who make her mother cry and ignorant kids who make remarks about her brothers, Khyber manages to enjoy herself, poring over atlases, planning exotic journeys, and taking peanut butter sandwiches to X. But when Tammy decides to move her sons to a group home for proper care, Khyber’s world starts to crumble. She fights with her mom and then gets expelled from school. To make matters worse, X suddenly disappears. Khyber sets out to find her in a wild all-night odyssey of self-discovery.
A Company of Fools

Deborah Ellis
Canadian Library Association Book of the Year, Honour Book
Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction, Honour Book
Mr. Christie Silver Book Award
Ruth Schwartz Award, finalist
Manitoba Young Readers_ Choice Award, nominee
Rocky Mountain Book Award, nominee
Henri has been living within abbey walls all his life, first in the care of nuns, then as a choirboy at St. Luc's, not far from Paris. He expects to spend the rest of his life there, copying books in the Scriptorium with the other brothers, and singing Mass in the great cathedral.

Then Micah arrives, a streetwise ragamuffin with the voice of an angel, saved from certain hanging to sing for God instead of coins. Micah comes like a fresh breeze into dead places, bringing exuberant joy at a time when Henri most needs it.

For the plague is coming, the grim reaper that will slash at the very roots of Henri's security. And neither Henri nor Micah nor anyone else in their world will ever be the same.
La Tienda Del Cielo/ The shop of heaven

Deborah Ellis
Lunch with Lenin and other stories

Deborah Ellis

Deborah Ellis's first collection of short stories explores the lives of children who have been affected directly, or indirectly, by drugs. Sometimes touching and often surprising, the stories are set against backdrops as diverse as the remote north and small town America to Moscow's Red Square and an opium farm in Afghanistan.

This is an unforgettable collection of stories that will elicit discussions about the toll drugs take on the lives of teenagers and their families.