The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

I appreciated what this story was meant to do and how it was meant to convey the horrors of Auschwitz to a younger reading audience. Unless you have a general understanding already of what happened at the concentration camps, though, the holding back and changing of words (from Bruno's ability to understand and comprehend what's going on) could honestly be a bit confusing.

The ending definitely took me by surprise and I was not expecting it at all. Seeing the behavior of the soldiers to the 9 year old protagonist was a surprise and helped add a little bit of tension. I mean, if they treat the children of the man in charge of the concentration camp in this manner, just imagine how horrible it is on the other side of the fence.

However, my biggest gripes concern the young main character. I absolutely cannot suspend reason and believe that a male child of a high-ranking Nazi soldier would not have been raised in a way to understand who was on the other side of the fence and why. It also felt like Boyne wanted Bruno to be on the spectrum, but couldn't bring himself to actually put it into writing. But really, my biggest issue is just that you feel bad for the family in the house because you're learning everything that's going on. Even after the ending, you find out how much the family is devastated by what happened, and it came across like you were expected to feel sympathy for the family that was in charge of the concentration camp instead of those trapped inside. it just felt really icky and put a foul taste towards the book from the get-go.

It feels like it was written to calmly introduce the insanity of what occurred at the camps to a group of people that might not have a good grasp of what went on, but it places a completely fake ending that never happened in real life in any record at all and detracts from the people that were nearly wiped out, and just makes you want to feel bad for Bruno's family instead of feeling horrible for what the people in the camp were experiencing. It's not one that I would ever recommend to anyone to read. It's off the mark for those that don't know much about the history of WWII, and way too lackluster for those that are well-versed in the events that happened.

Here are my main issues with this book:

1. The protagonist is 9-years old at the start; he's the child of a high-ranking Nazi official. Despite the fact his SISTER, who starts as 12-years old, knows what's happening, he has zero clue. Now, having worked with children, I'm about 100% certain if ONE child knows what's going on, then the OTHER child knows; it also makes no sense how he's so clueless about what his father does.

2. His lack of knowledge makes his friendship with Shmuel feel absurd, not just because of the fact that his father is a high-ranking NAZI OFFICIAL (which also makes it feel ridiculous). He's making false equivalences that, even at 9-years old, he'd know are false equivalences. "Gee, I wish I could wear an armband! No one ever gave me one!" As if he'd have no clue what the Star of David is? Or the Nazi Swastika? Have we forgotten WHO his father is? Because I'm pretty sure he'd have been pushed to be a part of this thing called, I don't know, THE HITLER YOUTH. He would have seen all of this propaganda at some point and had a frame of reference for it.

3. Both children are younger than they are. I've never met a 12 or 13-year old girl like Gretel, and I certainly haven't met a 9 or 10-year old boy like Bruno. To be fair, I've never met TODDLERS like these two characters. I'm not sure why authors can't accurately write children, but this is a spectacular fail.

4. History. All of it. There is nothing that is so little that is even remotely accurate, even for camps that WEREN'T Auschwitz. I'm not sure what version of the Holocaust he learned, but he learned one that apparently came from a Nazi apologist.

5. What is with these authors who keep doing Nazi family/person and Jewish family/person in WWII and Nazi family/person is made out to be a Good Person Deep Down? Or, in this case, also Really Naive About Everything?

6. Why is a German-speaking child confusing German words and location names for ENGLISH, especially when HE DOESN'T SPEAK ENGLISH? He even openly says that he DOESN'T KNOW ANOTHER LANGUAGE.

My daughter is reading this at school and loves it, she read it at school then had to get another copy from the library so that she could read it again. She has also seen the movie twice now. So I thought I'd give it a go to see what the fuss was all about.

It's a quick read and interesting. A nice way of getting kids to understand about what happened to the Jews in the concentration camps. The main character is the Commandant's 9 year old son Bruno who has had to move house to a place called "Out With" (I assume this is Auschwitz). The weakness in the book for me was Bruno, he seems like he has had an education, but he is incredibly immature. I know a lot of things would be beyond his understanding and maybe I'm expecting too much from him but he still annoyed me at times. Making him a bit brighter may have allowed the author to get across more info about what happened.

Still a damn sight more interesting than the stuff I was forced to read when at school.