35. The Song of the Whales - Uri Orlev

translated from Hebrew by Hillel Halkin
Houghton Mifflin, 2010
108 pgs.
Rating: I'm afraid I didn't like it at all

Michael's parents move from America to Israel because Michael's grandfather, who lives there, is getting old, and the parents don't want him to give his estate away to his housekeeper/"kept woman." They buy a big house in Jerusalem, and Michael goes - on his own - to visit his grandfather, who he feels close to.

Michael has no friends. He'd rather create and pretend, and he's never had friends. He isn't close to his parents, who don't seem to have much interest in him, either, to tell the truth. Madame Saupier, the housekeeper, doesn't like children because she was never able to have any of her own, and she forces Michael to be clean, clean, clean.

When Grandfather begins to ail, he and Madame Saupier come to live at Michael's house. Imagine, they have four bedrooms, how convenient. And Michael (who has become Mikha'el in Israel), slips into bed with his grandfather now and again. And now the really weird part - they share grandfather's dreams. This is a gift that he has apparently had, and it has passed on to Michael.

The dreams are bizarre (as dreams usually are), sometimes scary, and boring to read. The story jumps here there and everywhere, never really sticking to a storyline or finishing out an idea that was about to blossom. Sometimes it was even hard to tell what was real and what was a dream. And.....I didn't care. I was just happy to be finished.

I can't imagine a kid liking this book.