My Name Is Parvana

Deborah Ellis's My Name Is Parvana is a gripping story for 10 year olds about a girl who won't say a single word to the soldiers holding her.

What happens

This is the fourth book about Parvana, and she's a teenager now. American soldiers pick her up alone in the ruins of a school. They think the Taliban have been using it. All she has is an old shoulder bag of papers and a battered book.

They ask her name. They ask it in English, Dari, Pashtu and Uzbek. Parvana keeps her eyes on the floor and says nothing at all.

So she's locked in a cell that came flat-packed from a factory in Indiana (there's a sticker inside telling her so). Then the questions start again.

In between, the story goes back to the girls' school her family built from rubble. Her mother is the headmistress and her bossy big sister Nooria is a teacher. Parvana dug the latrines and runs the Wall of Achievement. Then she finds out that being an ordinary pupil is MUCH harder than building the place!

In the cell you're right inside her head as she recites the nineteen times table to stay calm. At school she's furious about fractions and walks straight out of the gate. How did she end up in that ruin on her own? That's the question pulling you through.

There are funny moments too. The interpreter turns one American phrase into something about wearing the feet of a cat. Parvana very nearly laughs (and she'd quite like to hit the major over the head with her own book).

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Parvana is questioned for hours and made to stand against a wall until she faints. A peddler she knows shows anyone who'll listen his scars from being tortured in prison. She also remembers people she's lost, including a little girl killed in a minefield.

None of this is described in gory detail, but it's tense and sad in places. A child who's upset by grown-ups frightening a young person might find the cell scenes hard going. For a reader who's already rooting for Parvana, this is a brave and stubborn story about keeping hold of who you are.

It carries on from the earlier books, so a reader who's new to Parvana should begin with The Breadwinner.

What to read next

If this one goes down well, try Michael Morpurgo's Shadow. Aman is fourteen and from Afghanistan, and he's locked up with his mum in a detention centre in England while his best friend's grandpa comes to visit.