The Cat at the Wall

(Paperback)

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Description

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 realises 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, 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. Then she sees a photograph, and suddenly understands what happened to the boy's parents, and why they have not returned. As the soldiers begin to panic, disaster seems certain, and she knows that it is up to her to defuse the situation. But what can a cat do What can any one creature do

Author Bio

Deborah Ellis has achieved international acclaim with her courageous and dramatic books that give Western readers a glimpse into the plight of children in developing countries. She has won the Governor General's Award, Sweden's Peter Pan Prize, the Ruth Schwartz Award, the University of California's Middle East Book Award, the Jane Addams Children's Book Award and the Vicky Metcalf Award. A long-time feminist and anti-war activist, she is best known for the Parvana trilogy, which has been published around the world in twenty-nine languages, with more than two million dollars in royalties donated to organisations such as Women for Women in Afghanistan, UNICEF, and Street Kids International. In 2017 Parvana was adapted into an award-winning animated film called The Breadwinner. In 2006, Deb was named to the Order of Ontario in 2016 she was named to the Order of Canada.