The Breadwinner

Deborah Ellis's The Breadwinner is a story for 10 year olds about a girl in Kabul who suddenly becomes the only person in her family who can go outside.

What happens

Parvana is eleven and she isn't allowed at school. The Taliban have banned girls from lessons and ordered women to stay indoors. For more than a year her whole family has lived in one room of a half-bombed building.

She gets out most days to help her father walk to the market. He lost part of his leg when his school was bombed, and he earns a little by reading and writing letters for people who can't. Parvana sits on the blanket beside him with her face covered and tries to be invisible.

Then soldiers burst in one evening and drag him away. Her mother is hurt trying to get him back. The food runs out. Somebody has to fetch the water and buy the bread, and Parvana's the only one who can.

What makes it so readable is how real Parvana is. She grumbles all the way up three flights of broken stairs with the water bucket. She wants to kick her big sister Nooria (who flips her long hair just to annoy her). Then she'll throw herself at a soldier without stopping to think.

Isn't it strange how ordinary the sister squabbles feel in such a frightening place? You're right there in that one room with them.

Her father's story about Malali, a girl who led soldiers into battle, keeps coming back to Parvana when she's scared. It's a lovely thread to follow.

It's worth knowing that this is a hard read in places. In the first few chapters soldiers hit Parvana's father, beat her mother with a rifle and sticks, and beat Parvana too. Her older brother was killed by a landmine before the story starts, and she's seen women whipped in the market.

A child who's easily upset by violence towards parents and children might find this one too much, so it's a good one to read alongside them. For a reader who's started asking questions about the news, or how other children live, it's a brilliant way in. Parvana's stubbornness stops it ever feeling hopeless.

What to read next

If they want another family under the same kind of rules, try Boy Overboard. Jamal is mad about football, his little sister Bibi plays it in the desert even though girls aren't allowed out, and their parents run a secret school at home.