Why did deborah ellis wrote the breadwinner

My Name is Parvana is perhaps the most subtle and accomplished of the four Breadwinner volumes. There are striking scenes of contrast in Afghanistan, torn between Western troops and the Taliban.

Photograph by Andrew Tolson. Joseph Communications uses cookies for personalization, to customize its online advertisements, and for other purposes. The Breadwinner , from , is about an year-old girl who poses as a boy to earn money for her family in Taliban-ruled Kabul, where misogyny was the rule of the day. This inspiration for the book arose from Ellis's visit to refugee camps in Pakistan, where she heard about Afghan girls masquerading as boys.

The book spawned three sequels and, now, a Nora Twomey-directed film with Angelina Jolie as one of its executive producers. Did she enjoy it? Luckily, I'm a writer. Nobody wants to see me, which is perfect.

A veteran now of some 30 books, Ellis tried her hand at writing the screenplay of the film adaptation of The Breadwinner. After she wrote the first draft, the more experienced screenwriter Anita Doron was brought in to polish and tighten.

Then, one day, she received a fateful call from her agent to audition for a film adaptation of The Breadwinner. The Breadwinner , which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday, tells the story of an indomitable year-old Afghan girl named Parvana. When her father is suddenly arrested in Kabul by the Taliban, Parvana dresses as a boy so she can work to support her family and venture out to discover if her father is still alive. The real story began in the late s, when peace activist-turned-author Ellis grew concerned about the treatment of women under the Taliban regime.

I'm not a good fundraiser. But I thought if I could go over there, collect some of their stories and find out who they are — how they deal with all of this, what they were living through, how they were reacting to it — that that might be useful," the Simcoe, Ont. And the money from the book could raise some money. No, no, not academic research. It got published by the press that it did, just because they were the only ones who said yes. I sent out tons of queries, and I was basically unpublished at the time.

What experiences of your travels in that region have made the deepest impression on you? I was back in Afghanistan in the winter of to do a book called Kids of Kabul , which [collects] interviews with children. I came away with a sense of two things. One is that there is still a huge hill to climb in terms of rebuilding the country after so many years of war.

And part of that hill includes a great deal of violence against women and a great deal of people clinging to old ideas, which is making it difficult for others to move forward. The other thing I came away with is how amazing this current generation of young Afghans is. So they are working really hard at school.

They are exploring art and music, interconnectedness with other people in very creative, exciting ways. Some Ontario school libraries restricted access to it based on objections raised by the Ontario chapter of the Canadian Jewish Congress. Why did the group take issue? I think it ended up being a very interesting discussion on what kids are capable of understanding and what kind of stuff we write for kids: if we subject kids to it in real life, should it be reflected in their literature?

Your books seem to give children credit for being able to understand a great deal. Where else has your writing taken you? Off to War was interviews with military kids from North America, Children of War is [about] children from the war in Iraq living in refugee camps in Jordan.