The Breadwinner (The Breadwinner collection)

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This year, I'm reading it with 6th graders and I'm looking forward to the higher-level thinking we'll be able to do. Author Deborah Ellis presents a strong rebuke of the Taliban while depicting Afghan culture and history with warmth, affection, and respect. Father lost leg in school bombing; child overhears woman assaulted in home; men, women, and children are beaten; children witness thieves getting arms chopped off in public punishment; child recounts violent deaths of family; woman describes seeing wild dogs eating bodies.

Something that was supposedly meant to protect them only stripped them of their freedoms, and many men took advantage of that.The Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis, published in 2000, is a children's novel that tells the story of 11-year-old Parvana and her family struggles under control of the Taliban in Afghanistan, who have severely restricted the agency of women. Soon the family runs out of money and food, a desperate situation since Parvana, her mother, and her sisters can't be outside unless they're with a man. Then the family gets exciting news--Parvana's older sister receives a proposal of marriage from the son of old family friends. She is found by a police officer named Shauzia, who takes her to Green Valley, a shelter and school for women and girls run by Parvana.

Parvana and her family used to live in a big house, but the daily bombing, which has gone on for years, has destroyed almost everything they owned. Weera and Mother come up with a plan: They will cut Parvana's hair and dress her as a boy so that she can work in the marketplace.The girl does not respond to questions in any language and remains silent, even when she is threatened, harassed, and mistreated over several days. The next day, Parvana goes to the market with Father’s writing things and sets up her blanket in his spot.

But when the Taliban were defeated in 2001, it looked as if Afghans could finally rebuild their country. Parvana stays with the neighbor woman, but then bad news arrives: the Taliban have invaded the very city where Parvana's family went for the wedding. The Window Woman is a mysterious woman who lives in the apartment right above where Parvana sits in the marketplace.One day while working, a tea boy spills cups on Parvana's blanket, and she is shocked to see that it is not a boy at all but Shauzia, her former classmate. Parvana s best friend, Shauzia, has escaped the misery of her life in Kabul, only to end up in a refugee camp in Pakistan. The Window Woman continues to drop gifts, but one day, Parvana hears the woman’s husband beating her. In this powerful and realistic tale, eleven-year-old Parvana lives with her family in one room of a bombed-out apartment building in Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital city during the Taliban rule.