Deborah Ellis

Young Parvana lives with her family in one room of a bombed-out apartment building in Kabul, Afghanistan. Because Parvana's father has a foreign education, he is arrested by the Taliban. Women cannot appear in public unless covered head to toe, go to school, or work outside the home, so the family becomes increasingly desperate until Parvana conceives a plan.

Valli has always been afraid of the lepers living on the other side of the train tracks in the coal town of Jharia, India, so when a chance encounter with a doctor reveals she also has leprosy, Valli rejects help and begins an uncertain life on the streets.

"Deborah Ellis, activist and award-winning author of The Breadwinner interviews young people involved in the criminal justice system and lets them tell their own stories. Jamar found refuge in a gang after leaving an abusive home where his mother stole from him. Fred was arrested for assault with a weapon, public intoxication and attacking his mother while on drugs. Jeremy first went to court at age fourteen ("Court gives you the feeling that you...

A homeless mother and her teenage daughter live on the streets of a big city. Their lives are hard. They look for food in garbage dumpsters, bathe in donut shop washrooms, and hide from the police. The daughter is getting angry - she doesn't want this awful new life. She wants her other life back, the life with her friends and school. The mother keeps trying to do the right thing, but everything is going so wrong.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have impacted the children of soldiers--men and women who have been called away from their families to fight in a faraway war. In their own words, some of these children describe how their experience has marked and shaped their lives.

Parvana is an eleven-year-old girl growing up under the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001. When her father is wrongfully arrested, Parvana cuts off her hair and dresses like a boy in order to support her family. Working alongside her friend Shauzia, Parvana discovers a new world of freedom, and danger. With undaunted courage, Parvana draws strength from the fantastical stories she invents, as she embarks on a quest to find her father and reunite her...

"The day Farrin meets Sadira, she no longer feels alone. And when the two fifteen-year-old girls become close friends, they dream of a future where they will live together, where they will make something of their lives, and where no one will notice or care that they love each other. But Farrin and Sadira live in Iran under a regime so repressive that it considers homosexuals as deviants who must be eradicated. Unless they learn to hide their relationship...

The darker side of a friendship is portrayed by Jess, a 17 year old who struggles to find the moral courage to remain loyal to her best friend who has been accused of murdering an eight year old girl at summer camp. The town becomes a media circus and the pressures become too great for Jess to cope.