Written by John Boyne.
Cover illustration of a boy. From the Panstwowe Museum Oswiecim Brezinske, Auschwitz. By Ali Campbell.
Published by Black Swan books for Random House.
ISBN: 978-0-552-77380-5
Ages: This could be disputed. Check out this interesting discussion and judge for yourself.
Image: Courtesy GoodReads.
Bruno is the 9yr old son of a senior Nazi officer, and lives with his parents and elder sister Gretel in Berlin. His father is posted 'to a far-away place,' Auschwitz, so the family has to move. Against his wishes, he is taken away from his friends to a place where his family are the only occupants of a solitary house, with no neighbours, and certainly no little boys to be his friends.
"All around the house in Berlin were other streets of large houses...he liked to stand in front of these stalls and close his eyes and breathe in their aromas, feeling his head grow dizzy with the mixed scents of sweetness and life. But there were no streets around the new house...when he closed his eyes, everything around him just felt empty and cold, as if he was in the loneliest place in the world. The middle of nowhere."
So there was Bruno, with no friends, an elder sister who was more into teen interests and parents who were distant, and who do not answer his questions about the change. Until one day, Bruno looks out of a window into the distance, and sees a huge wire fence extending in both directions further than he could see. Beyond the fence, there were "nothing but low huts and large square buildings dotted around and one or two smoke stacks in the distance." The place was teeming with people men, young and old, boys, too. But no women. They were all "wearing the same clothes as each other: a pair of grey striped pyjamas with a grey striped cap on their heads."
Bruno is puzzled by all he sees, but gets no answers from anyone. When he asks his father who all those people were, he is told "Those people...well, they're not people at all, Bruno." A Nazi officer's view of the Jews. Bruno asks his mother and sister about them, asks the maid too, but gets the same answer: Just keep quiet, don't ask too many questions, and just keep themselves safe until all this is over. But no good answers.
So Bruno decided to explore the inside and the outside of the new house. The inside was soon done, and there wasn't much to explore outside on their side of the fence, so he decided to go walking along the fence. Inspite of being warned countless number of times not to go anywhere near the fence or the camp. What was a boy to do with no-one to play with, no-one to speak to and nothing to do?
So he sneaked out and went for a long walk along the fence. The whole area was deserted, except that he saw a speck in the distance on the other side of the fence, who he realised was a boy about his own age when he came nearer, a boy in the striped pyjamas and an armband with a star on it.
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| courtesy wikipedia |
They got talking, and soon became friends. Shmuel, the boy, told him that he and his father lived there and there were hundreds of boys there. But they all always had fights, so he had come there to be on his own.
"It's so unfair," said Bruno. "I don't see why I have to be stuck over here on this side of the fence where there's no one to play with...Why are there so many people on that side of the fence? And what are you all doing there?"
Questions similar to the ones he had asked his family, and had been fobbed off. So now Bruno gets answers from a boy his age. Someone who knows that he and his family had to leave their home and come to this place in a horribly crowded, smelly train, and that his mother had been taken away from them along with the mothers, aunts, grandmothers and sisters of the other boys. A boy who is as much unaware of what it was all about as much as he is. Who has been uprooted from the familiar as much as he is. A kindred soul. Like any other nine-year-olds, they try to make sense of their world from whatever they know of it from what is happening. A very dangerous thing, as we soon realise.
Bruno decides to keep his friendship a secret. 'After all, he reasoned, they might not want me to be friends with him any more...when it came to parents...what they didn't know couldn't hurt them.' So their friendship continued, and Bruno went every afternoon to that spot near the fence, and Shmuel was always there.
Then one day, lice are found in Bruno's hair, and it had to be shaved off. Upset by this, his mother insists that she and the children go back to Berlin. But now Bruno does not want to go back. What happens after that is horrifying- a twist in the tale. Read the book to find out. It has also been made into a movie in 2008.
The ending packs quite a punch. An innocent boy, at the wrong place at the wrong time. The boy in the striped pyjamas. The horror of the Holocaust comes across in unexpected ways. Without there being anything explicit about the horror. No descriptions about the torture, the killings and yet mind numbing.
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| Tracks leading to Auschwitz II camp Courtesy wikipedia |
Auschwitz is in Poland, and had two camps: Auschwitz I which was a concentration camp, and Auschwitz II which was an extermination camp. Both were operational from May 1940 to January 1945, when it was liberated by the Soviet army. An estimated 1.1 million people were killed there, mostly by gassing (using an insecticide gas Zyklon B), but also by torture, illness, starvation, medical experiments by the infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele or point-blank killing. The dead included not only the Jews, but also ethnic Poles, Gypsies or Romas, and Soviet prisoners of war.
After the war, Auschwitz I was restored by the Polish government and the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (Panstwowe Museum Oswiecim Brezinske) was established, in honour of the victims of Nazism. Auschwitz II was preserved as it was, and a visitor gets a feel of the horrors of this infamous extermination camp. It is an UNESCO World Heritage site.
14 comments:
Chilling. Is this book for A's age group? I think even adults can gain from this book.
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas...Need to keep that one in mind the next time I'm at the bookstore. Sounds good to read, thanks to your review.
The suspense is killing me!
Sandhya, it was a wonderful wonderful review and stirred many emotions in me so much that I want to read this book immediately. But did you read it to A or did A read it herself? Is it for children ? Just wanted to check with you.
@Shankari & Vibha: The age group is not specified on the book. John Boyne is not really a writer for children in my opinion, as he has written the books 'Mutiny on the Bounty' and "Crippen' among others. This book, 'The boy in the striped pyjamas', however, has won the 'Waterstone Children's Book Prize' in 2006. Here's the link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottakar%27s_Children%27s_Book_Prize
Even so, I am not sure it can be read by children. I have not handed it to A, or even read it to her. She does know a lot about the Holocaust for her age, but not much about the actual ways in which the Jews were exterminated. Maybe in 2-3 years I will feel comfortable about giving it to her. I would put the age group at 13+ depending upon the maturity of the child. And yes, adults can learn a lot from it too. Especially the point that it is best to answer a child's questions as directly and truthfully as possible so that they do not try to make sense of things with their peers, often with disastrous results.
@RGB:That sounds great. Do read it.
@Arundhati: You should read it.:)
Hi Sandhya,
I would probably rate this book as 7th -12th grade. Of course, as you mentioned, it has much to offer adults as well.
I normally check the reviews of the book from a number of different library resources - School Library Journal, Book List, as well as the subject matter and overall reading levels to determine the grade levels that I assign to books. In many ways they are arbitrary based on the reading level and/or maturity of the child.
Your review is very nice. I have seen this movie, but have not yet read the book.
Thanks,
Donna (from Holocaust Resources for Children)
Chilling indeed. It's not a kids book as far as I know. It has child characters thats all.
And hey, you seem to be big time into Holocaust stories, no?!
@Donna: Thanks for you very thoughtful comment.
7th grade out here would be 14+, so I think my assessment that the book can be read by 13+ will not be far off the mark. Even then it would depend upon the maturity of the child. As Choxbox abouve has said, "it has child characters, that's all." It baffles me, then, that the book has got a children's book award. In fact, quite a few of them would not qualify as children's books in my view. The discussion to which I have provided a link at the beginning of my post gives an interesting view into this controversy. any inputs?
@Choxbox: Yes, I am, aren't I? If I had done literature for my graduation, I would probably have chosen the Holocaust as a major topic and gone on to do a doctorate in it.:)
Sorry to dig up an old post, but I couldn't resist this one. I've read the book and watched the movie, and I'd say the impact of the ending would be lost on young children unless they grasp the horrors of the holocaust. I'd recommend it to mid-teens+ who are mature enough to understand the historical aspect of the Holocaust and the crimes committed by the Nazis against the Jews. Ideally, this book would be a good way to get a teen started on researching more about the cataclysm of the Holocaust.
@Veena: Oh, do dig up more of my old posts- feel free. I would love to hear what you think.
I agree. This book, though about a young boy, 9 yrs old, is not for children of the same age group. I would, however, not recommend it as a starting point for a to start researching the Holocaust. I would prefer if A read it much later- after she has read books like Anne Frank's Diary and Number the Stars, both of which I have reviewed elsewhere. They have not much of the actual horrors, as this one has.
The horrors of the Holocaust are so much worse, because they have really occured. It rips the idea of a sane, safe world for a child. Much more nightmarish, therefore, than horrors in a fictional world.
Dear Sandhya, Great to know your viewpoint. I'm up for discussion on this too..would love to exchange ideas.
I think you got me wrong there. Let me explain myself. I didn't mean you should introduce this book as a beginner's book, or as an Intro to Holocaust for a young child at all. For that, lighter reads like the ones you mentioned would suffice, which can be easily absorbed even by early teens.
When I said this book would be a good way to get a teen started on researching more about the cataclysm of the Holocaust, I did not mean this for *just* understanding holocaust or its horrors, but rather, as a good book to inspire serious research for older kids or say history buffs, who love to delve deep and dig out root causes (with help from parents if required). Guess I didn't make that point clear.
By research, I meant deeper topics, and not just the anhilation involved.. for eg. understand antisemitism and its link to the Nazi propaganda, or even stuff like what is a propaganda, and how it holds its power on the masses. As for its introduction to our teens, we can't stamp an age, as already discussed, these topics are highly sensitive and highly subjective. I, for one, would be very pleased if my son as an older teen is interested in learning more and more about this.
Spot on, Veena! Good to be having this conversation. Yes, I agree with that.
In fact I had picked up a 'Young Usborne' book on the holocaust for A, but after I read it, I put it away, to keep for later. Even though it purports to be for readers as young as her, there is a lot of graphic description of the horrors, which I do not think she is ready for.
Yes, children everywhere need to be sensitised to all such things, in the hope that it will be a better world in the future. Not just the holocaust, but many other such things.
Yes Sandhya. Absolutely. We must encourage our teens to think of the HOlocaust as much more than the gutwrenching camp stories and mass extermination. Without dwelling too much on the gory aspects, we could direct them to think about the colossal failure that led to the genocide: how did the rest of the world respond? What failed here? What's its impact today? Tons of questions to be asked and tons to be learnt from this.
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