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“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.

Jafar 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 at the children’s aid society. Gretchen considers the lives of concentration camp victims during a school tour of Auschwitz. Mike survives twenty days of solitary as a young offender. Barry squirms on a food court chair as his parents tell him that they are separating. Macie sits on a too-small time-out chair while her mother receives visitors for tea. Noosala crouches in a fetid, crowded apartment in Uzbekistan, waiting for an unscrupulous refugee smuggler to decide her fate.

These children find the courage to face their situations in ways large and small, in this eloquent collection from a master storyteller.

Fiction

The Breadwinner Series

The Breadwinner is now a Major Motion Picture!

Royalties from the sale of My Name Is Parvana will go to a special account managed by Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan. Parvana’s Fund supports education projects for Afghan women and children, including women’s resource centers, libraries, literacy programs and community schools.

In 1996, when Deb read about the Taliban occupation of Afghanistan, and about their brutal treatment of girls and women, she decided that she had to get involved. She visited refugee camps in Pakistan, met Afghan women and heard about their experiences. She was particularly struck by the story of a young girl who cut off her hair and disguised herself as a boy so she could earn money to support her family. Deb knew she had to turn that story into a book. The result was the Breadwinner novels, about young Parvana and her best friend, Shauzia.

THE CAT AT THE WALL

Selected for the Cooperative Children's Book Center Choices

Selected for the Bank Street College of Education’s Children’s Books of the Year

A cat sneaks into a small Palestinian house on the West Bank that has just been commandeered by two Israeli soldiers. The house seems empty, until the cat realizes that a little boy is hiding beneath the floorboards.