Young Parvana lives with her family in one room of a bombed-out apartment building in Kabul, Afghanistan. Because Parvana's father has a foreign education, he is arrested by the Taliban. The family becomes increasingly desperate until Parvana conceives a plan.

Reviews

Gr 5-8-Actress Rita Wolf reads Deborah Ellis' heartfelt but uneven look at an Afghanistan girl's life under the Taliban with dignity and crystal clear diction (Groundwood, 2001). However, her talents can't smooth over the book's clunkier moments. Based on a true story (Ellis interviewed girls and women while volunteering at an Afghan refugee camp), the novel tells of a brave 11-year-old girl named Parvana who remembers life before the Taliban took over Kabul. Now her reclusive family lives in fear. After Taliban soldiers imprison her father, Parvana disguises herself as a boy and becomes the family's breadwinner, encountering friendship and horrors on the streets. Wolf does a fine job with the younger characters, but chooses to read the older ones with a distracting accent that makes them sound interchangeable. She reads Ellis' purposeful prose with grace. The strength of the book is that listeners will relate to Parvana and imagine what life would be like under a repressive regime. But even a talented narrator like Wolf can't compensate for such clunky moments as when Parvana fails to recognize Mrs. Weera on the street. The veiled woman says, "Oh, that's right, my face is covered. I keep forgetting." Dialogue like this keeps the book from being totally successful. Deborah Ellis reads the afterword, which provides a cursory summary of Afghanistan's recent history. There are some factual errors (e.g., the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, not 1980). Also, the book never mentions Islam. Despite these flaws, The Breadwinner features a brave heroine in troubled times and offers a sense of hope. For libraries with a need for an audiobook on the topic or for larger collections.-Brian E. Wilson, Evanston Public Library, IL Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.