Ellis, Deborah 1960–

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Ellis, Deborah 1960–

Personal

Born August 8, 1960, in Cochrane, Ontario, Canada; daughter of Keith (an office manager) and Betty (a nurse) Ellis. Politics: "Feminist, anti-war."

Addresses

Home—Simcoe, Ontario, Canada.

Career

Writer, counselor, and activist. Margaret Frazer House, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, mental-health worker, 1988.

Member

Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan (co-founder).

Awards, Honors

Book of the Year for Children shortlist, Canadian Library Association (CLA), 1999, Governor General's Award, 2000, and Silver Birch Reading Award shortlist, 2001, all for Looking for X; Red Maple Reading Award shortlist, 2001, Middle East Book Award, and Swedish Peter Pan Prize, both 2002, and Best Books for Young Adults selection, American Library Association, 2003, all for The Breadwinner; Governor General's Award finalist, 2002, and Book of the Year for Children Honor Book designation, CLA, Best Books for Young Adults selection, American Library Association (ALA), Ruth Schwartz Award, and Jane Addams Book Award, all 2003, all for Parvana's Journey; Books for the Teen Age selection, New York Public Library, 2004, and Hackmatack Award, 2005, both for Mud City; Jane Addams Book Award special commendation, for "Breadwinner" trilogy; Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children's Book Award, 2007, Book of the Year for Children Honor Book designation, CLA, 2007, and Best Books for Young Adults selection, ALA, 2007, all for I Am a Taxi.

Writings

"BREADWINNER" TRILOGY

The Breadwinner, Groundwood Books (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2001.

Parvana's Journey, Groundwood Books (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2002.

Mud City, Groundwood Books (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2003.

FICTION

Haley and Scotia, Frog-in-the-Well, 1995.

Looking for X, Groundwood Books (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1999.

A Company of Fools, Fitzhenry & Whiteside (Markham, Ontario, Canada), 2002.

Keeley: The Girl from Turtle Mountain, Penguin Canada (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2004.

The Heaven Shop, Fitzhenry & Whiteside (Markham, Ontario, Canada), 2004.

Jackal in the Garden: An Encounter with Bihzad, Watson-Guptill Publications (New York, NY), 2006.

I Am a Taxi, Groundwood Books (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2006.

Sacred Leaf (sequel to I Am a Taxi), Groundwood Books (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2007.

Jakeman, Fitzhenry & Whiteside (Markham, Ontario, Canada), 2007.

(With Eric Walters) Bifocal, Fitzhenry & Whiteside (Markham, Ontario, Canada), 2007.

Contributor to Click (anthology), Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine, 2007.

NONFICTION

Women of the Afghan War, Praeger Books (Westport, CT), 2000.

Three Wishes: Palestinian and Israeli Children Speak, Groundwood Books (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2004.

Our Stories, Our Songs: African Children Talk about AIDS, Fitzhenry & Whiteside (Markham, Ontario, Canada), 2005.

Sidelights

Canadian author Deborah Ellis's political activism has inspired her writings for young adults. In Looking for X, an eleven-year-old girl who calls herself Khyber—after the famous mountain pass in Afghanistan—lives with her single mother and five-year-old autistic twin brothers in a poor section of Toronto. Essentially friendless, Khyber struggles through the challenges life confronts her with until she meets and befriends a mysterious homeless woman known as X. One day, a group of skinheads harasses X and Khyber in a local city park; at around the same time the preteen's school is vandalized, and Khyber is ultimately blamed. When she goes in search of X in hopes that the woman will corroborate her story, Khyber begins an odyssey through the world of Toronto's homeless population.

Anita L. Burkam, reviewing Looking for X in Horn Book, noted that while a reader may expect Khyber's life to be bleak, given all her problems, Ellis instead strives to highlight joyful aspects of the girl's life, especially her love for her mother and brothers. "What you wouldn't expect are the marvelous characterizations and fiercely close family ties" in Ellis's tale, Burkam added. For Leslie Ann Lacika, writing in School Library Journal, Khyber's "quirky" life is not quite believable, but Ellis's rich characterizations in Looking for X make up for the lack. "Khyber is a likable protagonist and readers will appreciate how she copes with her issues," Lacika continued.

Ellis donated all profits from the sale of her next novel, The Breadwinner, to a charitable organization that funds schools for Afghan girls living in Pakistani refugee camps. The author first visited these refugee camps in order to collect stories of the war in Afghanistan as it was fought by the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. The resulting book, Women of the Afghan War, also contains first-person narratives of Soviet women soldiers, which Ellis traveled to Moscow in order to obtain. It was while she was recording stories among the Afghans that she heard of a young girl who cut off her hair and donned boys' clothing in order to go out onto the streets of Kabul and earn her family's living. "Something just went click in my head and I knew that I had to do a book about that person," Ellis told Debra Huron in Herizons.

Ellis's inspiration resulted in The Breadwinner. Published months prior to the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center and the ensuing war on terror-

ism conducted by the United States mainly in Afghanistan, The Breadwinner provides a child's-eye view of life under the Taliban regime. Ellis's protagonist is Parvana, an eleven year old whose scholarly father is imprisoned by the Taliban. With his loss, the family is left to starve, since women are not allowed to work or even to leave their homes unattended by a male relative. To help her family, Parvana decides to disguise herself as a boy and go out into the streets to earn money to feed her mother and small brothers. "The Breadwinner is a potent portrait of life in contemporary Afghanistan," John Green claimed in Booklist. Likewise, a contributor to Publishers Weekly concluded that "the topical issues introduced, coupled with this strong heroine, will make this novel of interest to many conscientious teens."

Ellis returns readers to war-torn Afghanistan in Parvana's Journey, a sequel to The Breadwinner. After her father dies, now-thirteen-year-old Parvana flees her village to avoid Taliban forces and begins searching for her remaining family. As she travels across the desolate, mine-riddled landscape, she encounters other homeless children and leads them all to a refugee camp. "Given her material," wrote Kenneth Oppel in Quill & Quire, "Ellis might easily have fallen into a political screed, but her writing is measured and careful, the height of dispassionate objectivity." According to School Library Journal critic Kathleen Isaacs, "readers are left with a horrifyingly realistic picture of the effect of war on children."

Mud City, the conclusion to Ellis's "Breadwinner" trilogy, concerns Shauzia, a strong-willed fourteen year old. Shauzia leaves the relative safety of her refugee camp in Pakistan to earn money on the dangerous streets of Peshawar. In the words of Quill & Quire reviewer Jeffrey Canton, "Mud City is a stunning portrait of a totally devastated world where children are forced to fend for themselves, often at the mercy of adults who have abdicated all responsibility."

Set in fourteenth-century Paris, A Company of Fools, centers on Henri, a sensitive choirboy, and Micah, a mischievous street urchin. Calling themselves "A Company of Fools," the boys entertain a populace threatened by the horrors of the Black Death, or plague, and some people come to believe in the healing power of Micah's voice. "Quicksilver language and strong imagery propel a powerful historical tale," observed GraceAnne A. DeCandido in her Booklist review of the novel. "Writing A Company of Fools was a real wild ride because it took me a long time to get the voice right and to get the story right," Ellis remarked to Canadian Review of Materials contributor Dave Jenkinson. "I have a great deal of affection for that book."

Ellis examines the effects of the AIDS epidemic on the people of sub-Saharan Africa in The Heaven Shop, a "grim portrait of disease and ignorance," observed a Publishers Weekly critic. Thirteen-year-old Binti Phiri and her siblings are ostracized by family members after their father, a coffin maker living in Malawi, dies of AIDS. The author "provides a realistic look into an area where life for children is very unstable," noted Resource Links contributor Victoria Pennell, and Canton stated that The Heaven Shop "offers readers a clear sense of the helplessness that African children and young adults face in confronting HIV/AIDS." In Our Stories, Our Songs: African Children Talk about AIDS, a related nonfiction work, Ellis profiles more than fifty children who have been orphaned by AIDS. The work was described as "an impressive offering whose chilling accounts remain with readers long after the book is finished," by School Library Journal critic Melissa Christy Buron.

A Bolivian youngster supports his family by running errands for prison inmates in I Am a Taxi. Twelve-year-old Diego lives in San Sebastian Women's Prison, where his mother is incarcerated for drug smuggling. Desperate for money, Diego is eventually lured into the cocaine trade. Enslaved deep in the jungle, Diego attempts a daring escape from the coca pits. The novel "is uncompromisingly gritty and graphic, painting a devastatingly accurate portrait of life for kids (and their parents) in the Third World," Laurie McNeill noted in Quill & Quire. In Sacred Leaf, a sequel, Diego finds

safety with the Ricardos, a family of poor coca farmers. When government troops plan to destroy the illegal harvest, Diego joins with other locals to blockade the highway. "This compassionate account of the lives of the working poor makes us care deeply about the characters," Canton stated.

Bifocal, which Ellis coauthored with Eric Walters, focuses on the relationship between Jay, a high-school football star, and Haroon, a gifted Muslim student. When the school goes into lockdown after a terrorist threat, both teens are forced to make difficult moral choices. According to Jean Mills, writing in Quill & Quire, "this thought-provoking novel works extremely well as an examination of the dangers of racism and the redeeming value of tolerance." "I'm fascinated by the capacity of children to cope in a dangerous world," Ellis once explained to SATA, "to live in it with joy and dignity. That is the general theme running through my books for young readers."

Ellis once commented to SATA on her attitude regarding her work as a young-adult novelist. "Sometimes I enjoy writing, sometimes I hate it because it takes me away from more pleasurable activities, but always I am compelled to do it. There is nothing so satisfying as completing another manuscript, knowing I've gotten through it one more time. Maybe it will sell, maybe it won't—that's up to the gods—but at least I didn't quit, and that feels great."

Biographical and Critical Sources

PERIODICALS

Booklist, May 15, 2000, Anne O'Malley, review of Looking for X, p. 1739; March 1, 2001, John Green, review of The Breadwinner, p. 1275; January 1, 2003, GraceAnne A. DeCandido, review of A Company of Fools, p. 888; November 15, 2003, Hazel Rochman, review of Mud City, p. 597; September 1, 2004, Hazel Rochman, review of Three Wishes: Palestinian and Israeli Children Speak, p. 122.

Herizons, summer, 2001, Debra Huron, "Transcending Borders," p. 36l; fall, 2007, Janet Nicol, "Once upon a Time," p. 37.

Horn Book, July, 2000, Anita L. Burkam, review of Looking for X, p. 456; January-February, 2005, Jennifer M. Brabander, review of Three Wishes, p. 109; November-December, 2005, Betty Carter, review of Our Stories, Our Songs: African Children Talk about AIDS, p. 733; January-February, 2007, Betty Carter, review of I Am a Taxi, p. 65; September-October, 2007, Elissa Gershowitz, review of Jakeman, p. 573.

Kliatt, November, 2002, Claire Rosser, review of Parvana's Journey, p. 8; September, 2003, Claire Rosser, review of Mud City, p. 7; September, 2004, Claire Rosser, review of The Heaven Shop, p. 8; January, 2007, Maureen Griffin, review of I Am a Taxi, p. 22; November, 2007, Claire Rosser, reviews of Sacred Leaf, p. 8, and Bifocal, p. 10.

Maclean's, November 12, 2001, Brian Bethune, "Kabul for Kids: A Canadian Scores with a Tale of Taliban Oppression," p. 56.

Publishers Weekly, March 19, 2001, review of The Breadwinner, p. 100; December 20, 2004, review of The Heaven Shop, p. 60; June 25, 2007, review of Jakeman, p. 60.

Quill & Quire, October, 1999, Sheree Haughian, review of Looking for X; October, 2000, Bridget Donald review of The Breadwinner; July, 2002, Kenneth Oppel, review of Parvana's Journey; October, 2002, Maureen Garvie, review of A Company of Fools; October, 2003, Jeffrey Canton, review of Mud City; August, 2004, Jeffrey Canton, review of The Heaven Shop, and Gwyneth Evans, review of Three Wishes; November, 2004, Dory Cerny, "Where the Money Goes" (profile of Ellis); September, 2005, Bridget Donald, review of Our Stories, Our Songs; September, 2006, Laurie McNeill, review of I Am a Taxi; June, 2007, Maureen Garvie, review of Jakeman; September, 2007, Jeffrey Canton, review of Sacred Leaf; November, 2007, Jean Mills, review of Bifocal.

Resource Links, December, 2002, Mavis Holder, review of A Company of Fools, and Ann Abel, review of Parvana's Journey, both p. 21; December, 2003, Anne Hatcher, review of Mud City, p. 14; October, 2004, Victoria Pennell, review of The Heaven Shop, p. 28; December, 2004, Victoria Pennell, review of Three Wishes, p. 43; December, 2005, Joan Marshall, review of Our Stories, Our Songs, p. 41; February, 2006, Moira Kirkpatrick, review of Keeley: The Girl from Turtle Mountain, p. 20; February, 2007, Victoria Pennell, review of I Am a Taxi, p. 10; October, 2007, Carolyn Cutt, review of Jakeman, p. 13.

School Library Journal, July, 2000, Leslie Ann Lacika, review of Looking for X, p. 104; July, 2001, Kathleen Isaacs, review of The Breadwinner, p. 106; December, 2002, Kathleen Isaacs, review of Parvana's Journey, p. 137; November, 2003, Kathleen Isaacs, review of Mud City, p. 138; October, 2004, Kathleen Isaacs, review of The Heaven Shop, p. 161, and Alison Follos, review of Three Wishes, p. 190; November, 2005, Melissa Christy Buron, review of Our Stories, Our Songs, p. 156; December, 2005, Rick Margolis, "When Children Suffer: Canadian Writer and Activist Deborah Ellis Talks about the AIDS Epidemic," p. 40; December, 1006, Miriam Lang Budin, review of I Am a Taxi, p. 138.

Time International, November 26, 2001, Bryan Walsh, "Veil of Tears: A Children's Book Details Life under the Taliban," p. 66.