Review on 👕 John Boyne Boys' Striped Pajamas for Boys' Clothing by Rick Booth

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is one of those books that I think most people should read at least once in their lives. The action takes place in Berlin during World War II. A boy named Bruno returns home to find his father with a "very important job" and the family is about to move to a new house. The move is unintentional and he ends up in a house near Auschwitz (which he mistakenly calls "out of home"). The story is told in the third person and the reader follows Bruno as he lives in his new home, exploring the area, dealing with his sister's "hopeless case", adjusting to his new life and eventually coming to terms with a 9- year-olds. Jewish prisoner Shmuel. The author did a fantastic job of capturing Bruno's innocence throughout the book, although I had to remind myself that kids in the 1940's just didn't know as much as they do today. Sometimes I thought "No 9-year-old child would be so protected" when Bruno complained about his house, seemingly unaware of what was going on behind the barbed wire fence in Auschwitz, but in reality they were there. In the 1940s there was no internet, little was known about Auschwitz, and concentration camp propaganda showed Jewish inmates frolicking in parks, picnics, and schools, and Bruno, as the son of a German commandant, wasn't allowed to ask questions or watch meetings. without consequences. As the reader follows Bruno the author does an amazing job of capturing the horrors of the POW camps but humanity is also good through Bruno and Shmuel to the point of being ideologically shaped as we see his sister Gretel as the book progresses. The book was gripping and tragic and the final scene with Bruno and Shmuel broke my heart. Although this book is about the horrors of the concentration camps, there is no blood, no explicit scenes of violence, and no descriptions. It's particularly touching, but the prisoners' feelings of fear are loud and clear throughout the novel. The author amazingly showed how terrible the life of the prisoners was, how brutally they were treated by the soldiers, and how those who opposed the Reich tried to escape or simply turn a blind eye to it all. This book aims to introduce young readers to the horrors of war and hopefully spark good conversations about how to avoid similar parodies in the future.