Deborah Ellis

"In this powerful collection of short stories, children around the world turn eleven and take a step into their futures. Each one is changed in ways both big and small. Annoyed at having to walk his sister's dog on his birthday, Connor heads into an undeveloped subdivision, where he comes across chilling evidence of a stranger's unhappiness. A girl sneaks away from her class camping trip to a local conservation area and experiences, for the first...

Found wandering alone in a bombed-out Afghan school, 15-year-old Parvana mystifies American military forces by remaining silent, while spending her time remembering the past four years of her life, having been reunited with her mother and sisters and living in a village where her mother has finally managed to open a school for girls.

Because the Taliban rulers of Kabul, Afghanistan, impose strict limitations on women's freedom and behavior, eleven-year-old Parvana must disguise herself as a boy so that her family can survive after her father's arrest.

The seated child. With a single powerful image, Deborah Ellis draws our attention to nine children and the situations they find themselves in, often through no fault of their own. In each story, a child makes a decision and takes action, be that a tiny gesture or a life-altering choice. Afar is a child laborer in a chair factory and longs to go to school. Sue sits on a swing as she and her brother wait to have a supervised visit with their father...

This high-interest, low-vocabulary novella is intended for adult basic education (ABE) and English as a Second Language (ESL) readers. Rose and her daughter Hazel are on the run in a big city. During the day, Rose and Hazel live in a shack hidden in the bushes. At night, they look for food in garbage bins. In the summer, living in the shack was like an adventure for Hazel. But now, winter is coming and the nights are cold. Hazel is starting to miss...

The three books in Deborah Ellis's Breadwinner trilogy bound into one handsome volume. Deborah Ellis's novels The Breadwinner, Parvana's Journey and Mud City have been a phenomenal success, touching the hearts of readers the world over. Here are the three books bound into one handsome volume -- for readers new to Deborah Ellis and for those who would like a collector's edition for their libraries.

USBBY Outstanding International Books Honor ListIn this book, Deborah Ellis turns her attention to the most tragic victims of the Iraq war -- Iraqi children. She interviews young people, mostly refugees living in Jordan, but also a few who are trying to build new lives in North America. Some families have left Iraq with money; others are penniless and ill or disabled. Most of the children have parents who are working illegally or not at all, and the...

This high-interest, low-vocabulary novella is intended for adult basic education (ABE) and English as a Second Language (ESL) readers. Duncan is very angry. Tess, his wife, has turned their dining room into a library. Then disaster strikes: Tess gets sick, and soon Duncan is alone. Right away, he clears out the books he hates. Suddenly, things in the house start to move around by themselves. A strange message appears in the kitchen. Is the house haunted?...

For twelve-year-old Diego and his family, home is a 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 and were mistakenly convicted of drug possession. Diego's 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...

Since its publication in 2000, hundreds of thousands of children all over the world have read and loved The Breadwinner. By reading the story of eleven-year-old Parvana and her struggles living under the terror of the Taliban, young readers came to know the plight of children in Afghanistan. But what has happened to Afghanistan's children since the fall of the Taliban in 2001? In 2011, Deborah Ellis went to Kabul to find out. She interviewed children...