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.