No Ordinary Day
Like the other children in her village, Valli has always been repulsed by the “monsters”—the people living over the tracks. “Some had no noses. Some had hands without fingers that they waved in the air as they tried to protect their heads from our rocks.” Valli lives with an affectionless aunt and uncle who expect her to contribute to the family income, usually by gathering coal. When she learns her family is not her family at all—her mother paid them to take her when she was very young—she runs away and ends up on the streets of Kolkata. There she meets a doctor who recognizes the numbness in Valli’s feet—she’s impervious to pain—as a sign of leprosy, the same disease the “monsters” in her village have. The doctor takes Valli to her clinic, and Valli glimpses possibility—she wonders if she, too, might study medicine some day. But she can’t abide the other leprosy patients and walks away from help. Eventually she returns, certain she wants a better future than life on the streets. Both Valli’s first-person voice and her story are compelling in Deborah Ellis’s eye-opening and accessible novel set in contemporary India. Valli is an appealing child whose ignorance can’t mask either her intelligence or the goodness waiting to be uncovered in her heart. By story’s end, Valli’s future seems to be a hopeful one. ©2011 Cooperative Children's Book Center
CCBC Age Recommendation: Ages 9-13
Age Range:
Grades 3-5 (Ages 8-10)
Grades 6-8 (Ages 11-13)
Format:
Novel
Subjects:
Economic Hardship and Poverty
Empathy and Compassion
Illness and Disease
Indians and Indian Americans
Medicine
Science and Scientists
Diversity subject:
Asian
Physical Disability/Condition
Publisher:
Groundwood
Publish Year: 2011
Pages: 159
ISBN: 9781554981342
CCBC Location: Fiction, Ellis