Have you read The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne (U.K., 2007)?

I haven’t read it, but I saw the movie in 8th grade English class. It was really good but extremely sad, obviously. I think a child should at least be in middle school before reading/seeing it.

No.

seen the movie, but not read it

I have read the book. I had to read it as an entrance assignment to my new school…high school (9th grade). It was a very good book, and really vivid. John Boyne is an author that seems like he can really capture the essence of the horror in the Holocaust. I liked the book, but i’m not really into all that scary, life in peril situations. I wouldn’t have just read it for pleasure. But for a school assignment, it does bring up good discussion questions. I wouldn’t reccomend this book for someone in 5th grade. Wait till about 8th grade, because there are a couple situations that I didn’t even like.

I haven’t read the book, but I saw the movie a couple of years ago. I thought it was very strong in its message and didn’t guess that it was intended for a young audience. In fact, as I recall the ending of the film, I’m not sure that a child with no prior knowledge of the historical elements would have understood what was going on.

I do think there’s such a thing as introducing the horrors of man’s inhumanity to man at too young an age. Some children are exposed to actual unthinkable conditions and events that they can’t escape, and that’s a tragedy in itself, not just for them but for anyone in their situation. But what’s the benefit of forcing awareness of the worst kind of experiences onto youngsters who have not gained the maturity or perspective necessary to process it? Who gains by instilling terrifying nightmare visions into young minds?

When I was a little girl, not very long after the war’s end, one of the many pictorial volumes that my father brought home and left on an end table in the living room was Life Magazine’s World War II in pictures. It might have been this, or at any rate something much like it. There was one picture in there of a long, broad flight of steps in front of some public building. The body of a child, a little girl of maybe 3 or 4, lay on its back on the steps like a broken rag doll, head downward, eyes open, victim of some act of war in a European city. I knew the child was dead just by looking at her. The image terrified me and filled me with horror. At that point in my young life, I had never contemplated the death of a child. The public nature of it, and the fact that the child lay there all alone with no one near, was dreadfully upsetting to me. I can still see it in my mind’s eye and remember the feeling.

I can’t see how it did me or anyone else any good for me to take that in. And that was a very small dose compared with what I might have been shown. What’s the purpose? What’s the benefit? I think a teenager is quite young enough to start thinking about the worst things the world’s people can do to one another.

I agree with the book’s critics. It is a fairytale and doesn’t teach the truth of the concentration camps.

I have read it and while it was a sad story I found the child unrealistic. I didn’t believe a child of the age Bruno was supposed to be (aged 9) would be so naive and the play on words such as ‘out with’ and ‘Auschwitz’ didn’t work for me. Firstly, I didn’t believe a child of 9 would have such a low level of comprehension of their own language and of course ‘out with’ is English not German. And the Fury rather than Fuhrer. This sort of thing ruined the story for me. It grated.

Yes, @Bellatrix, but how about the fact that he didn’t know what a Jew was or the fact that there were no 9 year old boys at Auschwitz.

I agree @bkcunningham another example of how implausible the story is. It might have worked better if the child had been younger although I didn’t like the story generally. Like @Jeruba, I also didn’t know the book was aimed at children.

Nope. Nor did I watch the movie. I’m saturated.

@Bellatrix – I found young Bruno quite believable. The self absorption of 9 year old children is great. Perhaps the author intended to show how millions of people could avoid “knowing” about the death camps. You understand that kind of “knowing?” It is the kind of thing that happens when the neighours are aware that a child is being abused, but they don’t report it. The German civilian population must have known: but a lot of them were Brunos, grown-up Brunos.

@bea2345 I don’t think wanting to present the idea that the German population was deliberately blind requires him to present a nine year old child as being backward linguistically which is how I perceived Bruno. We will have to disagree on this book I think.

@Bellatrix, those elements weren’t present in the movie. If I had read the book, I think I too would have found them extremely annoying in the way that willful ignorance is annoying. They don’t make any sense, and it’s offputting to be expected to go along with something stupid as if you didn’t know any better. I’m glad that was not an obstacle in the movie, which I thought was well done, even though the boy still seemed strangely naive.