About the Author

Deborah Ellis has achieved international acclaim with her courageous and dramatic books that give Western readers a glimpse into the plight of children in developing countries. She has won the Governor General's Award, Sweden's Peter Pan Prize, the Ruth Schwartz Award, the University of California's Middle East Book Award, the Jane Addams Children's Book Award and the Vicky Metcalf Award. A long-time feminist and anti-war activist, she is best known for the Parvana series, which has been published around the world in twenty-nine languages, with more than two million dollars in royalties donated to organisations such as Women for Women in Afghanistan, UNICEF, and Street Kids International. In 2006, Deb was named to the Order of Ontario and in 2016 she was named to the Order of Canada.

Reviews

Another honest, compassionate novel from Deborah Ellis, whose skill as a writer only keeps improving.'ACYL Newsletter, Dec 04powerful, uncompromising storytelling' Jane Conolly, ?Magpies? Vol 20, No 1, March 05It's a page turner with a worthy social message.' The Age March 12 2005believable optimism and an affirmation of human dignity.' Viewpoint 28 Autumn 2005

Gr 6-9-When 13-year-old Binti Phiri's coffin-making father dies, a grandmother she hardly knows says what no one in Malawi likes to admit: the man, like his wife, died of AIDS. Now orphaned, Binti and her siblings are sent to relatives far from home. A Cinderella-like existence with an uncle whose family ostracizes them and steals their money proves so intolerable that her older sister runs away. Binti, too, escapes and makes her way to her grandmother's village. There she discovers her Gogo surrounded by children, cousins and pretend cousins, all dealing with the effects of the epidemic. A local AIDS activist eventually finds Binti's brother, in jail, and her sister, working as a prostitute. Reunited, the young people open their own coffin shop. The author's travel in the area informs her work, but the message, though important, threatens to overwhelm the story. Binti is a well-developed character, but the others and the events of their lives seem to have been introduced in service to plot; they don't come alive the way the Afghans do in Ellis's "Breadwinner" trilogy (Groundwood) or the way the AIDS victims and their relatives do in Alan Stratton's Chanda's Secret (Annick, 2004). Readers with an interest in faraway places won't mind, though; they will cheer as Binti, self-centered and self-important when life is good, learns through adversity and through the model of her grandmother to think and behave more generously. Teachers and librarians looking for fiction about sub-Saharan Africa will find this title a useful addition.-Kathleen Isaacs, Edmund Burke School, Washington, DC Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.