ISBN 978-1547604531
Published by Bloomsbury YA, 2020
Genre/Format: Nonfiction/Hardcover, eBook, Audiobook
Awards
YALSA Nonfiction Award, 2021
Reading Level: This book centers on a girl from the ages of 16-20 during a war. Although it is listed for grades 8 and up on Amazon and NoveList, it's appeal is for high schoolers due to the intense and often gruesome subject matter.
Plot Summary: The Cat I Never Named is an autobiographical recounting of the author's experiences living through the Bosnian War in the 1990s. The book begins just before Sabic-El-Rayess' celebrates her 16th birthday and four years later just as the war is ending. As she begins to notice signs of the impending war, a cat saunters up to her, rarely leaving her side during the war. The cat becomes a beacon of hope to Amra and her family as she describes the danger, despair, and deprivation they endure throughout the siege of her city, Bihac. Amra chronicles this critical time in a teen's life, when she should have been in school and transitioning into adulthood. She had been an extraordinary student before the war, looking forward to a career in science, but during the war she focused on simply surviving. Amra Sabic-El-Rayess lives to tell her tale, and spares no detail to make sure we know what real war feels like.
Author Background: Since arriving in the U.S., Sabic-El-Rayess has earned a B.A. from Brown University, two Master's degrees and her Ph.D from Columbia University where she is now a professor at its Teacher's College (Sabic-El-Rayess, 2018).
Critical Evaluation: This is an incredible recounting of Sabic-El-Rayess' life during the Bosnian War. She vividly describes everyday life, from gruesome details after a bomb explodes nearby, to her family's desperation for food, to glimmers of love and hope that make life worth living, and even to her imaginings of what might come. A war that seemed impossibly distant and unrelated to my own life is brought right to my doorstep and shines a light on how the world failed the Muslims of Bosnia. This important book should become required reading for every high schooler. My only criticism is the title because it belies the profound nature of this memoir.
Speed-Round Book Talk: Amra Sabic-El-Rayess recounts her memories living through the Bosnia War starting when she was 16 years-old. How she and her family survived is nothing short of a miracle bestowed upon them by a nameless cat.
Library Program: This book inspires people to do better as a community. To that end, we will make hygiene and food kits for the homeless. For one month, we will solicit and collect donations of water, hygiene items, and shelf-stable food. We will sort, place into bags and distribute to the homeless in the community.
Potential Challenges: There can be no reasonable objections to this book because it is the true story of how someone survived war. There are some gruesome details, but war is not pretty and this book is not meant to sugar-coat it. Any objections might come from the anti-Muslim community, from those who don't like descriptions of violence, or from the likes of Holocaust deniers. Censoring this books for the pleasure of those groups is the exact type of propaganda that eventually can lead to genocide.
Reason for Inclusion: This book not only explains how the war happened, but why it happened, who was responsible for it and how the world failed. It is a breathtakingly honest account of what it's like to live in a besieged city that everyone should read.
References
BBC News. (2015). Srebrenica massacre - Explained in under 2 min. You Tube.
Sabic-El-Rayess, A. (2018). About Amra. Amra Sabic-El-Rayess, Educator & Scholar.
https://www.sabicelrayess.org
Teachers College, C. U. (2020). Book Talk: The Cat I Never Named: A True Story of Love, War,
and Survival . You Tube. https://youtu.be/lwLWljO4COU
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