Boy in the Striped Pajamas

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.

I couldn't help but project the thought of my boys onto little Bruno and see them in his place. Innocent and naive. Seems like we've always been trying to protect our kids from the harsh realities of the world for generations and not much has changed in that regard. Maybe protecting them is not the answer after all. It didn't help Bruno.