The Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis Review

The Breadwinner is the life of a 12 year old girl living in Kabul, Afghanistan during the rule of the Taliban, a religious group that controls the country.  Parvana lives with her three siblings and her parents in a one room apartment building.  Her father is taken and thrown in jail by the Taliban for having a foreign education.  Due to the laws set in place by the Taliban, women can only be in public if they are covered head to toe and have a note for a male relative.  Parvana’s family will starve with her father in jail so she comes up with a plan that only she can pull off.  She is young enough that she can cut her hair and pretend to be a boy.  Will she be able to pull off her disguise in her war fraught country? What does Parvana have to do to save her family? 

Justification for reading The Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis

The Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis is a story about a 12 year old girl, Parvana, trying to live through the rule of the Taliban.  This is a story that delves deeply into the heart of another culture drastically different from our own.  There are so many different themes that this book discusses.  Students can learn about accepting different cultures and tolerating different beliefs as well as learning about taking on a problem even when it looks hopeless.  This story is unique in that the author went to refugee camps to interview those who fled Afghanistan.   This story is based off of the tales they told.  Students can learn a lot about the world outside our own country.  
This book is a 5.5 reading level according to Scholastic books.  It's slightly under a sixth grade reading level so the story is more accessible to all students.  It's important for them to understand the concepts from the book and we will go over all of them in class with many fun activities.  This story can be used in cross-curricular lessons between Language Arts and Social Studies.  There is a particular background that will need to be discussed with the students before they read so they have a background on the culture that Parvana lives in.  These are terms that are not known as well in our society because we don't use those terms as often.  Some and not all of these terms and ideas are; Taliban and who they are, hijabs, burquas, and more.  It's a great novel to show the students about the world and other cultures.