This is a gen­tle yet pow­er­ful sto­ry of a boy grow­ing up in a small Israeli vil­lage who takes a trip to vis­it his cousins who live in one of Israel’s larg­er cities. In the city, Ita­mar faces a dis­turb­ing inci­dent of play­ground prej­u­dice. His tor­men­tors don’t under­stand who he is or why he seems dif­fer­ent. Ita­mar becomes mild­ly injured result­ing in a break­through moment of under­stand­ing and open­ing up pos­si­bil­i­ties for increased insight and even friend­ship. The sto­ry is loca­tion-spe­cif­ic and there is much to be learned about Israeli soci­ety with­in its pages. The divide between Israeli ​“city kids” and ​“coun­try kids” may have a polit­i­cal nuance slight­ly dif­fer­ent than the same divide in oth­er places. This is han­dled sub­tly and del­i­cate­ly and does not get in the way of the tru­ly uni­ver­sal mes­sage of the sto­ry, that hav­ing an open mind and a will­ing­ness to get to know some­one who acts or dress­es dif­fer­ent­ly ben­e­fits all. The illus­tra­tions are col­or­ful and acces­si­ble but the illus­tra­tor could have done much more to give the sto­ry of sense of atmos­phere and a touch of unique­ness. There are few pic­to­r­i­al details and the char­ac­ters’ facial expres­sions are rather bland. Nev­er­the­less, the book is a great jump­ing off point for dis­cus­sions about bul­ly­ing and about dif­fer­ences between peo­ple who turn out to be not quite so dif­fer­ent after all.