The Breadwinner

This is a story about the courage and tenacity of an 11-year-old girl who is forced to work around the strict rules against women and girls that were enforced by Taliban law to provide for her family. 

Parvana is an 11-year old girl living in a one-bedroom apartment with her parents and three siblings in Afghanistan when the Taliban was at the height of its power. Through her perspective, readers witness the effects of the Taliban's extreme and restrictive rules against women and girls, including being forbidden to leave their homes. To help her family earn money to survive and to allow her to move freely in public, Parvana disguises herself as a boy to work in the market. 

I appreciate how Canadian author Deborah Ellis vividly and honestly portrays Parvana's struggles in her daily life. There were a couple of scenes that were more graphic than I was expecting for a middle grade read (**see brief spoiler below book description), but I think it's important that Ellis doesn't sugarcoat Parvana's experiences. This book provides a good conversation starter between parents and middle school kids and reminds us that some people are still fighting for basic human rights. 

This first book in the Breadwinner series is inspiring, eye-opening and powerful and is a multiple award winner for good reason. Highly recommended.  

My Rating: 4.5 stars

Author: Deborah Ellis

Genre: Middle Grade, Historical Fiction

Series: Breadwinner 1

Type and Source: ebook from public library

Publisher: Groundwood Books

First Published: Sept 1, 2000

Read: April 14-15, 2026

Book Description from GoodReads: The first book in Deborah Ellis’s riveting Breadwinner series is an award-winning novel about loyalty, survival, families and friendship under extraordinary circumstances during the Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan in the late 1990s.

Eleven-year-old Parvana lives with her family in one room of a bombed-out apartment building in Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital city. Parvana’s father — a history teacher until his school was bombed and his health destroyed — works from a blanket on the ground in the marketplace, reading letters for people who cannot read or write. One day, he is arrested for the crime of having a foreign education, and the family is left without someone who can earn money or even shop for food.

As conditions for the family grow desperate, only one solution emerges. Forbidden to earn money as a girl, Parvana must transform herself into a boy, and become the breadwinner.

The fifteenth anniversary edition includes a special foreword by Deborah Ellis as well as a new map, an updated author’s note and a glossary to provide young readers with background and context. All royalties from the sale of this book will go to Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan. Parvana’s Fund supports education projects for Afghan women and children.

Spoiler below

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Descriptions of the hands of thieves being chopped off and young gilrs digging up human bones to make money.