In 2006, she wrote the best-seller, I Am a Taxi, which tells the story of a Bolivian boy named Diego whose family was accused of smuggling coca paste, which is used to produce cocaine. The novel was written to dispel myths about HIV/AIDS and celebrate the courage of child sufferers. One of her best known works is the 2004 book The Heaven Shop, which tells of a family of orphans in Malawi who are struggling with sudden displacement as a result of the HIV/AIDS impact. It follows a young girl in her day-to-day life in a poor area of Toronto and it received the Governor General's Award for English-language children's literature in 2000. In 1999, her novel Looking for X was published. While The Breadwinner was inspired by an interview with a mother and a girl who disguised herself as a boy in a refugee camp, the subsequent books in the series were more imaginative explorations of how children would survive. From these interviews, she wrote The Breadwinner series, which includes The Breadwinner (2001), a book about a girl named Parvana, Parvana's Journey (2002), its sequel, Mud City (2003), about Shauzia, Parvana's best friend, and My Name is Parvana (2011), the fourth book in the series. She travelled to Pakistan in 1997 to interview refugees at an Afghan refugee camp. She has held many jobs advocating for the peace movement and the anti-war movement. Much of her work as a writer has been inspired by her travels and conversations with people from around the world and their stories. Ellis started writing when she was 11 or 12 years old. Her themes are often concerned with the sufferings of persecuted children in the Third World.īorn in Cochrane Ontario, Ellis and her family moved several times during her childhood due to her parents' work. Deborah Ellis CM OOnt (born August 7, 1960) is a Canadian fiction-writer and activist.

My name is parvana