Deborah Ellis

Deborah Ellis, activist and award-winning author of The Breadwinner interviews young people involved in the criminal justice system and lets them tell their own stories.

Jamar found refuge in a gang after leaving an abusive home where his mother stole from him. Fred was arrested for assault with a weapon, public intoxication and attacking his mother while on drugs. Jeremy first went to court at age fourteen ("Court

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Living with his family in a prison in Bolivia due to his parents' convictions for drug trafficking, twelve-year-old Diego does his best to live a normal life, but when his mother receives additional fines, Diego risks everything to earn quick money.

Explores the plight of Afghanistan's children since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, featuring the stories of twenty-six children, aged ten to seventeen, and their struggles to continue educating themselves and improving their own lives despite living in a country torn by war, violence, and oppression.

Provides interviews with forty-five young indigenous children between the ages of nine and eighteen, who speak of their fears, challenges, and struggles to maintain their cultural heritage.

Parvana'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. But it is hard to imagine herself in a field of purple lavender when she is living in the Widows Compound...

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's finally managed to open a school for girls.

Valli has always been afraid of the lepers living on the other side of the train tracks in the coal town of Jharia, India, so when a chance encounter with a doctor reveals she also has leprosy, Valli rejects help and begins an uncertain life on the streets.