Shauzia

'Watch what you're doing!' The angry newspaper seller spat at her. He kicked Jasper. Jasper yelped. Shauzia pulled her dog away. I don't like it here, Shauzia told Jasper. Shauzia just wanted to sit some place and be quiet, but every time they sat down they were told to go away. Imagine that you're alone in a foreign city. To eat you must scrounge through rubbish, to sleep you huddle in doorways. Where do you go? Who do you trust? When Shauzia leaves the relative safety of the refugee camp she faces many difficulties. But she has all the spirit and pluck of her friend Parvana, and with the help of her dog Jasper she knows she will fulfill her dreams. Shauzia is a thrilling, thought-provoking companion to the bestselling Parvana, and Parvana s Journey.

About the Author

Deborah Ellis says her books reflect “the heroism of people around the world who are struggling for decent lives, and how they try to remain kind in spite of it.” Whether she is writing about families living under Taliban rule in Afghanistan, street children in Pakistan, the coca protests in Bolivia, or the lives of military children, she is, as Kirkus attests, “an important voice of moral and social conscience.” A lifelong small-town Ontarian — born and raised in Cochrane and Paris and now living in Simcoe — Deb has won the Governor General’s Award, the Ruth Schwartz Award, the University of California’s Middle East Book Award, Sweden’s Peter Pan Prize, the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award, and the Vicki Metcalf Award for a Body of Work. She recently received the Ontario Library Association’s President’s Award for Exceptional Achievement, and she has also been named to the Order of Ontario.

She is best known for her Breadwinner Trilogy, set in Afghanistan and Pakistan — a series that has been published in seventeen countries, with more than one million dollars in royalties donated to Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan and Street Kids International. Her recent young adult novel, No Safe Place (which has so far received starred reviews in Quill & Quire, Kirkus and School Library Journal), follows three teenagers who flee desperate situations in their home countries and make a perilous journey across the English Channel to seek new lives in England.