One minute, Clare is a middle school student in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, but the next, she is in Bethlehem—“the real one”—and she’s a cat.

Thus begins Ellis’ thought-provoking and extremely accessible exploration of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the eyes of a reflective stray cat (with a wry sense of humor) who finds refuge in a one-room house south of Bethlehem in the West Bank. Two Israeli soldiers, one ignorant and the other wiser and more compassionate, have commandeered it as a surveillance post, but the cat soon realizes there’s a small Palestinian boy hiding beneath the floorboards and having trouble breathing…and where are his parents? Through suspenseful and compelling prose, the author presents the situation with evenhandedness and emphasizes the importance of context; she trusts that young readers can understand a great deal. Even so, the manner in which this story is told skews young, making the treatment of at least one horrific act of violence feel a little superficial. In some ways, the skillfully integrated mirror narrative, that of Clare the girl approximately a year earlier, is more nuanced. Usually an A student and a master at flying under her teachers’ radars while performing small (and large) acts of meanness, when she encounters “Ms. Zero” and accrues 75 detentions (served by copying out the inspirational poem “Desiderata”), everything changes.

Quietly moving, full of surprises and, with Clare’s colloquial and spirited voice, highly readable. (Fiction. 10-13)

-Kirkus Review

A disappointment. The book is narrated by a cat trapped in a Palestinian house on the West Bank commandered by two Israeli solders, where a young Arab boy is hiding. The cat is a reincarnated young girl from the U.S., and the narative goes ack and forth between the circumstances of her unfortunate death and escalating tensions once the neighbors surround the house. It did not work for me. ( )

This book pleasantly surprised me. Actually, I feel like that statement is not accurate. It took me by surprise, for sure, it was moving and powerful and deeply eye opening, but maybe pleasant is the wrong word to use. I have not read enough literature from developing countries and to be honest I don’t know anything about the Israel/Palestine conflict so there was some of this that was new to me, which makes me think it could also be difficult for the middle grade readers it was intended for. But I feel like I’m getting ahead of myself. What is this book?

Clare is a cat in Israel who used to be on very spoiled 13-year-old American girl. She is absolutely dreadful as a human being and when she dies, she returns as a cat in the chaos of Israel. She is just looking for shelter when she follows two Israeli soldiers into the Palestinian house they have commandeered. The only inhabitant of that house is a scared little boy hiding under the floorboards.

This has been one of my only stand out reads lately, and it came when I really needed it. It’s not long, only a 142 pages, so naturally I knocked it off one Sunday afternoon. It was a captivating read and a fascinating and unique insight to a world I know very little about, embarrassingly. I consider myself educated but then I read books like this and I know there is a lot I’m missing. It is great that books like this exist and I know I should be reading more of them. They need to be read and shared.

I liked the simplistic, straight forward thinking of the cat and hence the way the story was told. At times I was crying, I was smiling, my heart was racing and in my throat. The cat’s story in Israel was juxtaposed with the story of Clare as a girl and what led to her death. This girl was not nice! And that’s why it’s interesting to see that story against the relatively simple life of the cat (although the cat was in a conflict zone). It made for a fascinating read that I did not put down.

The story builds as the soldiers discover the boy and then the tension builds further and further when the boy’s schoolteacher drops by and the situation is realised by the people in the neighbourhood. As the story races to a conclusion we don’t know how it’s all going to unfold and it’s almost a little frightening to know how things like this can happen in our world. This book’s promise is enormous with the powerful potential to educate and open the minds of the young it is geared towards. I hope it ends up into the hands of someone whose perspective it can change. I know it has mine. ( )

This is quite a departure from Ellis's typical straightforward storytelling and I'm not quite sure what to make of it. As usual, Ellis bravely tackles complex subjects and difficult themes, and does not flinch in dealing with them. There is just something I find off-putting in the reincarnation narrative. Perhaps if I were not already so familiar with her other works, I might have a different reaction. ( )

I'm not sure about the audience for this book. It's a rather grim tale about a spoiled, mean girl who dies and is reincarnated as a not particularly nice cat on the Palestine/Israel border. Will she help others or continue on her selfish path? It's a rather depressing past to find the answer. ( )