Boy in the striped pyjamas

[Tomselleckhaskindeyes]

I’ll admit I have not read the book but I am trying to find something for my children to read that is thought provoking. They know about the Holocaust in general terms but not the horrible details. What age group would be best for this book?

I read The Silver Sword at about 8 and I still vividly remember the powerful effect it has on me .

The silver sword is very good, I also recommend I am David - I didn’t read it until I was an adult but it’s primary age suitable.

I really didn’t like the lovely bones book or film - I think because I read a lot of crime the baddie usually gets caught in the end and I just felt the story didn’t go anywhere and I didn’t like the ending. I definitely wouldn’t think it appropriate for a primary child.

Neither Room nor The Lovely Bones is suitable for primary school age, in my view.

I'm teaching BISP to my S1s (12/13yrs old) just now but I'm also going to read some of the criticism around the text with them and let them write about whether it's a good text to read as a youngish reader.

They're enjoying it, as far as class novels go.

I heartily disagree with the posters saying TBItSP fails because it makes us only sympathise with the Aryan boy and his Nazi parents. I taught the book to year 7 for ten years and it knocks kids off their feet.... particularly before the film came out when the story was less well known. It’s a fable and the author makes that clear, but by making us feel so sick for Bruno and his family at the end we examine as readers why that is and question why his life is seemingly of more value even when we KNOW that it isn’t. We feel Bruno’s accidental death hard because he’s a real person to us and the faceless Jews aren’t- it makes us realise that everyone is someone’s Bruno because we realise it along with the Commander and his wife: all of those victims are someone’s child. That’s the point.

I think it’s a great tool to get students thinking and discussing the holocaust.

"We feel Bruno’s accidental death hard because he’s a real person to us and the faceless Jews aren’t"

And you don't find that problematic? You don't ask yourself why the Jews couldn't have had faces? Why a Jewish child couldn't have been somebody's Bruno?

Why they couldn't have been as enterprising and clever (not even the adults!) as a sheltered 9-year-old boy?

You don't find it trivialises the whole experience if we are made to ignore that for any Jewish child, a large part of his previous existence would have been in a society where his non-Jewish peers were made to spend their leisure time learning to chant songs of hatred against people like him?

corythatwas No, of course it’s problematic but it’s meant to be problematic. We see it through the eyes of the German characters because it makes the ending more shocking. It’s a story about the German adults realising and coming to terms with what they've allowed their Society to become, by virtue of their own ambition (in the case of the father) or by doing nothing (in the case of the mother).

The Jewish characters aren’t fully fleshed out (in my opinion) because we know that story and we know It’s hideous, evil and devastating. Because the details of the holocaust are so well known the author needs to go elsewhere to make us sit up and take notice. He achieves that. The ending makes you rethink everything about the Holocaust. Of course it’s simplified, it’s for kids and of course it has its issues, I’m not saying that I think it’s the finest piece of work from a literary or historical POV, but it gets young people thinking and talking about this period of history.

And whilst Bruno isn’t a member of the Hitler Youth, his sister is and the author does a very good job of showing how she thinks about the people in the camp (she says that they aren’t real people, which confuses Bruno no end) so it doesn’t pretend like the German people were clueless, it’s just Bruno who is. That may well be unrealistic for a child of his age- I don’t know, I’ve got literature degrees, not history ones- but he has to be innocent to the facts for the fable to work.

For what it’s worth there were members of my ancestors lost in those camps, I’ve been to Auschwitz and seen what remains with my own eyes and that’s why I think that anything that starts a conversation about the holocaust with children is a good thing.

Apologies for the random capitalisation and then non-capitalisation of “Holocaust”. It’s my phone doing it, not me.

TomSelleck I haven't read the whole thread but the best book for young people to learn about the Holocaust is Anne Frank's Diary, bar none.

There are many inaccuracies in TBITSP - namely that this could and did not ever happen. I know some school sare using it but it really doesn't represent the history of the Holocaust well.

Id maybe try Eli Wiesel's Night. If you're going to do the subject how can you sugarcoat it really?

AllTheWhoresofMalta did you not teach using Anne Frank's Diary? Shame on you if not. It's all very well reading a novel to try and understand the Nazi German POV but if you are teaching about the Holocaust then use a factual book written by one who was the age of those you are teaching.

A big problem with TBITSP for me i that it feeds into this modern misconception that concentration camps and death camps are exactly the same. Its bad history.

Also Kids like Bruno were 'taught' about jewish people from a very early age in the 3rd Reich

The holocaust educational trust advise against using TBITSP for all of the reasons already given by PPs AlltheWhores. There are much better resources out there - and in Particular Anne Frank's Diary - after all she WAS a real person. there is no need to feel sympathy for a fictional victim when there is much, much better factual material out there.

I think a better book would be Once by Morris Gleitzman. Suitable for years 5/6 I'd say.

I wish English departments would stop using the Boy in the Striped PJs a class reader - there are so many superb resources out there. I would also recommend Nicholas Winton's story. Look on YouTube for videos about him - such a modest man who saved so many lives.

I so agree with this. I have just read a new novel based on the Kindertransport and recommend it although not for young people. The Child on Platform One by Gill Thompson. Very well researched and its only 99p on KIndle atm.

We used a lot of resources alongside the novel including victim testimony, Anne Frank and historical documents to teach context surrounding the novel. We even took that year group to the fabulous holocaust museum in Newark for several years. In spite of its issues I do think it was a worthwhile book to have on the curriculum for that age group, supposed bad history or not.

Also, I didn’t choose the curriculum but felt and still feel that it was a good way to get a conversation started about that period of history. At the end of the day it was taught first and foremost as literature and the idea of it as a fable is great from a literary POV and I am first and foremost an English teacher. But it has its place in my opinion and is a good book to read at year 5-7 kind of age with the support of other resources too.

Ah, thanks for explaining you were teaching English, not history.

TomSelleckHasKindEyes My cousin has recommended the same book as Lazydaisydaydream for young people (9 - 13 years old) Once is part of a series. It's the story of a young Jewish boy who is determined to escape the orphanage he lives in to save his Jewish parents from the Nazis in the occupied Poland of the Second World War.

The film is awful. Embarrassing. The ending is like a spoof.

So I won't be giving my children the book at any age!

I suppose it all goes down to how the text is used. If it is critically analysed then an awful lot can be learnt from it’s shortcomings. I’ve looked at once and they do look good books so I am going to order them.

We see it through the eyes of the German characters because it makes the ending more shocking.

To whom? How would any Jewish (or for that matter, black or Asian) kids feel about knowing that you, their teacher, thinks it is essential to have a white non-Jewish character to experience it through because a Jewish child just wouldn't be shocking enough? Their parents will certainly know that this is a very, very common (and potentially racist) trope in modern fiction and film: that there has got to be a white character there to befriend the black/Asian/Jewish victim because otherwise it just won't seem important enough.

For me, the whole OutWith thing, where a little German boy can't pronounce a German place-name (Auschwitz is the German name for a Polish town) and mishears it as some English words (in a way that doesn't make sense because a German W=English V), epitomises how shallow and thoughtless the plotting is.

I found those puns (Outwith, the Fury) tinny and cheap like a Sun headline, trivialising the Holocaust and reducing it to tabloid fodder.