No Ordinary Day
No Ordinary Day is a story about Valli, a young girl in India who discovers she has leprosy. She runs away to Kolkata, the city that used to be called Calcutta, and lives on the streets where she meets a doctor who agrees to help her.
The following are excerpts from School Library Journal's interview with Deborah Ellis about No Ordinary Day:
Was Valli inspired by a real person?
I heard many stories while I was in India—and there are many more I didn't get a chance to hear yet! Leprosy affects a wide variety of people, as any disease does, and each has their own story of how they learned about it and how it affected their life. So while Valli wasn't inspired by a single real person, she was inspired by many.
What made you write about leprosy, a disease that's pretty uncommon here and often misunderstood?
Leprosy doesn't make any sense to me—we have a cure, so why do folks still suffer from the disease? The answer, of course, is that the world hasn't made these folks a priority. If they were a priority, the world would make sufficient resources available to cure them and to wipe out the disease forever. We are on the edge of getting rid of leprosy—imagine what an accomplishment that would be for the human race! This book is a small step toward that goal.
What kind of research did you do for the book?
I spent some time in Kolkata, mostly around the Leprosy Mission hospital there, but also touring around a bit to villages the Leprosy Mission serves. In addition to their work at the hospital, they also do a lot of community development, training local folks to do human rights work, rehabilitation, making shoes that are good for folks affected by leprosy to wear, building decent housing and projects to assist folks to earn an income. It was amazing to spend time in the wards, meeting with folks and learning about their journeys from their villages into treatment.
Are all the proceeds from the book going to the hospital?
All the proceeds from the book are going to the Leprosy Mission, for their hospital and for whatever other work they need to fund.
The following are excerpts from School Library Journal's interview with Deborah Ellis about No Ordinary Day:
Was Valli inspired by a real person?
I heard many stories while I was in India—and there are many more I didn't get a chance to hear yet! Leprosy affects a wide variety of people, as any disease does, and each has their own story of how they learned about it and how it affected their life. So while Valli wasn't inspired by a single real person, she was inspired by many.
What made you write about leprosy, a disease that's pretty uncommon here and often misunderstood?
Leprosy doesn't make any sense to me—we have a cure, so why do folks still suffer from the disease? The answer, of course, is that the world hasn't made these folks a priority. If they were a priority, the world would make sufficient resources available to cure them and to wipe out the disease forever. We are on the edge of getting rid of leprosy—imagine what an accomplishment that would be for the human race! This book is a small step toward that goal.
What kind of research did you do for the book?
I spent some time in Kolkata, mostly around the Leprosy Mission hospital there, but also touring around a bit to villages the Leprosy Mission serves. In addition to their work at the hospital, they also do a lot of community development, training local folks to do human rights work, rehabilitation, making shoes that are good for folks affected by leprosy to wear, building decent housing and projects to assist folks to earn an income. It was amazing to spend time in the wards, meeting with folks and learning about their journeys from their villages into treatment.
Are all the proceeds from the book going to the hospital?
All the proceeds from the book are going to the Leprosy Mission, for their hospital and for whatever other work they need to fund.