No Ordinary Day

Even though Valli spends her days picking coal and fighting with her cousins, life in the coal town of Jharia, India, is the only life she knows. The only sight that fills her with terror is the monsters who live on the other side of the train tracks -- the lepers. When Valli discovers that that her "aunt" is a stranger who was paid money to take Valli off her own family's hands, she leaves Jharia and begins a series of adventures that takes her to Kolkata, the city of the gods. Valli finds that she really doesn't need much to live and is very resourceful. But a chance encounter with a doctor reveals that she has leprosy. Unable to bear the thought that she is one of the monsters she has always feared, Valli rejects help and begins an uncertain life on the street.

Author: Deborah Ellis
Publisher: Groundwood Books
Published: 09/20/2011
Pages: 144
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.54lbs
Size: 7.60h x 5.40w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9781554981342
Audience: Ages 9-12

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 4
Point Value: 4
Interest Level: Middle Grade
Quiz #/Name: 146332 / No Ordinary Day


Award: Governor General's Literary Awards - Finalist
Award: West Virginia Children's Book Award - Winner


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 07/11/2011
Quill & Quire 09/01/2011 pg. 37
Kirkus Reviews 08/15/2011
School Library Journal 09/01/2011 pg. 150
Bulletin of Ctr for Child Bks 11/01/2011
Horn Book Magazine 11/01/2011 pg. 99
Booklist 11/01/2011 pg. 60
Voice of Youth Advocates 12/01/2011 pg. 490 - Recommended - Hard To Beat
Booklist Ed Choice Youth 01/01/2012 pg. 14
Hornbook Guide to Children 01/01/2012 pg. 68 - Outstanding, Noteworthy In Style

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.