A remarkable and thought-provoking new novel set on Israel's West
Bank, by the author of The Breadwinner.
On Israel's West Bank, a cat sneaks into a small Palestinian house that
has just been commandeered by two Israeli soldiers. The house seems
empty, until the cat realizes that a little boy is hiding beneath the
floorboards.
Should she help him?
After all, she's just a cat.
Or is she?
It turns out that this particular cat is not used to thinking about
anyone but herself. She was once a regular North American girl who only
had to deal with normal middle-school problems -- staying under the
teachers' radar, bullying her sister and the uncool kids at school,
outsmarting her clueless parents.
But that was before she died and came back to life as a cat, in a place
with a whole different set of rules for survival.
When the little boy is discovered, the soldiers don't know what to do
with him. Where are the child's parents? Why has he been left alone in
the house? It is not long before his teacher and classmates come looking
for him, and the house is suddenly surrounded by Palestinian villagers
throwing rocks, and the sound of Israeli tanks approaching.
Not my business, thinks the cat. And then she sees a photograph, and
suddenly she understands what happened to the boy's parents, and why
they have not returned. And as the soldiers begin to panic, and disaster
seems certain, she knows that it is up to her to diffuse the situation.
But what can a cat do? What can any one creature do?
Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language
Arts:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.3
Compare and contrast two or more characters, settings, or events in a
story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., how
characters interact).
