Jackal in the Garden: An Encounter with Bihzad »

Deborah Ellis won Canada’s Governor General’s Award in 2000 for her first book, Searching for X. She is also the author of several other books, including Parvana’s Journey, winner of the Jane Addams Award and the Ruth Schwartz Children’s Book Award, given annually by the Ontario Arts Council and the Canadian Booksellers Association. She lives in Ontario, Canada.

The first Art Encounters title to feature art outside the Western canon

Little is known about the fifteenth-century Persian painter Bizhad—we only know that he worked in what is now Afghanistan and Iran, and that he was the first artist to sign his works. Jackal in the Garden imagines Bizhad as an astoundingly gifted dreamer and contrasts him with a strong female protagonist, Anubis, a girl born disfigured into the harem of her vicious father. She must fight for survival—and her struggle leads her to Bizhad and the artists’ colony he leads. Both philosophers, they find common ground. Yet their different attitudes offer a sharp, unusual commentary on life, survival, and art that will resonate with young adult readers seeking their place in the world.

• Award-winning author

• Multicultural story features a strong female protagonist

Publishers Weekly

In the eighth addition to the Art Encounters series that uses a painting as the jumping-off point for a young adult novel, Deborah Ellis takes as her inspiration Kamal al-Din Bihzad's painting A Meeting of Scientists for her novel Jackal in the Garden: An Encounter with Bihzad. Young Anubis, rejected by the harem in which her mother serves, takes refuge in an artist's enclave where she meets Bihzad, a miniaturist and instructor. In A Brush with Napoleon: An Encounter with Jacques-Louis David, Laban Carrick Hill similarly uses Jacques-Louis David's painting Napoleon Crossing the Alps at Saint Bernard as the starting point for his novel about a young French soldier who attempts to put the war behind him by working on his own artwork. Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.