Charlie Posted February 8, 2009 Posted February 8, 2009 Has anyone else read this book? It's a truly fantastic piece of work even thought it's meant to be for children. Picked it up yesterday, started reading this afternoon and finished it already. For those who haven't heard of it, it's about a 9 year old boy, the son of the commander of Auschwitz Concentration Camp and are relocated to live in a house next to it from Berlin. He meets a Jewish boy and they talk through the fence for a year, becoming friends. The genius of it? As the story is told through the boy he has no idea what is going on and is actually jealous of the people on the otherside of the fence (he doesn't know they're Jewish or anything about them). The Fuhrer is called by the boy as "the fury" and the camp itself is called "Out-With". It's well worth a couple of hours of your time to read, it really doesn't take long.
Slaggis Posted February 8, 2009 Posted February 8, 2009 I really wanted to catch the movie version when it came out a few months back, but never got the chance. The whole story of it looked really fascinating.
Gentleben Posted February 8, 2009 Posted February 8, 2009 I really wanted to catch the movie version when it came out a few months back, but never got the chance. The whole story of it looked really fascinating. Yeah I enjoyed the movie version last year, I loved how the sister was kind of brain washed into what she was been taught and how the brother was too young to understand and had an innocent about his surrounding.
Fierce_LiNk Posted February 8, 2009 Posted February 8, 2009 I've read this book, and I was lucky enough to teach it to my Year 8 class at my last placement school. They really enjoyed it, as did I, and they had a lot to say about the novel. Quite a few of them were unable to understand how Bruno never knew what was going on, whilst others argued very passionately that he was too young, so how could he have known? It's very clever in the way that it is written. It never seems patronising in the slightest, which it could have had the potential to have done. You really feel sympathy for Bruno. The front cover summed it up rather nicely. "A tale of innocence told in a world of ignorance" or something to that effect. I'd definitely recommend that everybody read this at some point. I gave this book to my housemate to read, and she cried. The ending of the novel particularly affects you (I won't give details, and neither should you research the ending. Read it for yourself. It's much more powerful that way). My next step is to watch the film. After reading the last two chapters together with my class, I asked that we just spend the next few minutes in silence to think about what we had just read. It was very moving. They had a minor reputation as a class that could get themselves into trouble (although in actual fact, four of the girls were on report cards, but never for anything awful. A perfectly good class really) but they sat in total silence as we read the ending.
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