Deborah Ellis (1) (1960–)

Representation: Asian characters
Trigger warnings: Kidnapping, abuse, death of a father, sexism, persecution
Score: Seven points out of ten.
This review can also be found on The StoryGraph.

7/10, this was an enjoyable novel despite it being less than 100 pages yet it still manages to be a well executed one albeit being rather heartbreaking. It starts off with the main character Parvana living with her family but she lives in Taliban controlled Afghanistan in 2001 which is just an awful place to live there but anyways some Taliban soldiers arrive to interrogate her father and take him away and she would do anything to find him again. Towards the middle of the book she disguises herself and goes off alone continuing on her quest, financially supporting herself and meeting some other characters along the way however I also liked how her father explained the backstory of Afghanistan so creatively and the power of stories as well. In the last part she eventually does find her father; this moment soon turns bittersweet as he passes right in front of her eyes before she talks about the power of stories and people again ending the story, besides that the colour palette and art style look pleasing to the eyes and feels like a realistic artists' impression of a town in Afghanistan. I'm surprised that I've never even heard of this story until I picked it up and of course it was worth reading though the original novel could be just as good.… (more)

This novella length book is the first in a post-apocalyptic trilogy, and is a good start to what promises to be an interesting series. Some readers may think that at 139 pages it couldn’t possibly set the scene for a gripping trilogy, and those readers would be wrong.

This type of post-apocalyptic themed novel seems to be all around us at the moment, but in this debut novel I found something I hadn’t come across before, a complete storyline and some very relatable characters. The main protagonist is a strong man faced with unenviable choices and following a course of actions he may have thought himself incapable of before the collapse of the world he knows. Through a skilful use of writing and rich development of the characters, this Author is able to give this books readers a thoroughly emotionally charged and realistic journey through their trials and tribulations.

The situations the Author places her characters in are well described and thought through to the point the reader is made to think and examine the way they would react in the same circumstances, and as I have said in previous reviews I do like a book that makes me think.

Although I am not a big fan of zombie novels, I am looking forward to reading the remainder of this trilogy and would, therefore recommend it to anyone who enjoys this genre of book or is an avid viewer of The Walking Dead.


Originally reviewed on: http://catesbooknuthut.com/2014/01/07/review-the-breadwinner-stevie-kopas/




This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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One minute, Clare is a middle school student in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, but the next, she is in Bethlehem—“the real one”—and she’s a cat.

Thus begins Ellis’ thought-provoking and extremely accessible exploration of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the eyes of a reflective stray cat (with a wry sense of humor) who finds refuge in a one-room house south of Bethlehem in the West Bank. Two Israeli soldiers, one ignorant and the other wiser and more compassionate, have commandeered it as a surveillance post, but the cat soon realizes there’s a small Palestinian boy hiding beneath the floorboards and having trouble breathing…and where are his parents? Through suspenseful and compelling prose, the author presents the situation with evenhandedness and emphasizes the importance of context; she trusts that young readers can understand a great deal. Even so, the manner in which this story is told skews young, making the treatment of at least one horrific act of violence feel a little superficial. In some ways, the skillfully integrated mirror narrative, that of Clare the girl approximately a year earlier, is more nuanced. Usually an A student and a master at flying under her teachers’ radars while performing small (and large) acts of meanness, when she encounters “Ms. Zero” and accrues 75 detentions (served by copying out the inspirational poem “Desiderata”), everything changes.

Quietly moving, full of surprises and, with Clare’s colloquial and spirited voice, highly readable. (Fiction. 10-13)

-Kirkus Review… (more)