The Wandering Family

This is the tale of a seemingly normal Israeli family: a father, a mother, a grandmother, a boy and a girl who raise a dog and a cat. During the day they act normally, but at night, strange things take place. They wander from bed to bed: the dog sneaks into Grandmother`s bed, and she wanders onto the cat`s sofa; the children wander into their parents` bed, and sometimes the dog and the cat join them. The parents look for someplace else to pass the night – Mother wanders into Maya`s bed, and Father falls asleep on the floor and afterwards moves to Yonatan`s bed. And so every night they trade places, until one night burglars break into the apartment. When they go into the parents` bedroom, the dog and the cat pounce on them, scratching and biting them. What luck that the dog and the cat were sleeping in the parents` bed!

This is the opening story in the collection, most of which are humoristic, like the story about the remarkable gentleman who talks to himself, laughs and runs from place to place and acts like a child. Or the story about the cat whose family tries to get rid of him, even though he always returns, and in the end it turns out that he is a she! Two stories deal sensitively with the difficult adjustments of children who move to a new place. Uri does not go down into the yard to play with the children who shun him, and prefers instead to draw in his room. Until one day the ice breaks, and the children invite him to play soccer and ask him to be the goalie. In the book`s final story, Noam leaves the kibbutz with his family and moves to Jerusalem. He suffers when his classmates make fun of him and spends recess with the janitor. Then, a new child joins the class and Noam approaches him. The two quickly become good friends, but Noam does not forget the janitor, his grown-up friend.