Ellie and the Cat

Name: William Joseph
Price range: $

by Malorie Blackman, illustrated by Matt Robertson

Interest age: 6 to 11
Reading age: 6+

Published by Barrington Stoke, 2019

Adventure
Fantasy

About this book

Ellie is being sent off to stay with yet another relative while her dad is away for business. She’s sick of being moved around from person to person whenever he goes away. Now it’s her grandmother’s turn and Ellie is determined to be as rude and unhappy about the situation as a person can possibly be. But Ellie’s grandma has a few tricks of her own up her sleeve – and magically swaps Ellie into the body of her pet cat, Jolly.

In order to become human again, Ellie must complete a special task before sunset the next day – or stay as a cat forever. But how exactly is she going to manage it? Meanwhile, Jolly, who rather likes being a human child, will do anything to stop her from succeeding…

In a dyslexia-friendly format, this is a magical and gently comic tale of friendship and thinking of others. When she’s turned into a cat, we get to see Ellie for who she really is behind the sadness of missing her dad, while she’s given the chance to make some unusual new friends and ultimately find a place to belong.

About the author

Malorie Blackman is acknowledged as one of today's most imaginative and convincing writers for young readers.

The novels in her Noughts & Crosses sequence have won several awards, including the Children's Book Award, and she has won many other awards for her books for the Random House list. Both Hacker and Thief! won the Young Telegraph/Gimme 5 Award – Malorie is the only author to have won this award twice – while Hacker also won the WH Smith Mind-Boggling Books Award in 1994.

Her work has appeared on screen, with Pig-Heart Boy, which was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, being adapted into a BAFTA-award-winning TV serial. Malorie has also written a number of titles for younger readers. In 2005, Malorie was honoured with the Eleanor Farjeon Award in recognition of her distinguished contribution to the world of children's books.

In 2008, she was then honoured with an OBE for her services to Children's Literature. She was the Waterstones Children's Laureate for 2013-2015.

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