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Join in for children's book recommendations.

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Join in for children's book recommendations.

Children's books

"its me david" - i need help

41 replies

withagoat · 07/03/2011 13:57

where and WHEN was the conc camp he was escaping for - turkey?
and at one point he says he wants books dated pre 1917 so "they " havent read them

?Russia

hayulp

OP posts:

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Chaotica · 07/03/2011 18:06

Yes - a little investigation revealed it's not supposed to be set in a real time or place. (Finally - after 30 odd years - the rubbish geography in it makes sense to me...)

withagoat · 07/03/2011 17:57

maybe as someone said its a generic idea to look at teh whole thing of identity

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Chaotica · 07/03/2011 17:56

Fair enough.

(I don't intend to read the thing again. Oddly though, that messes the politics of the rest of Europe up as David would simply have had to get to Thessaloniki before being safe. Maybe it is deeply confused and we are battling to make sense of a book which doesn't.)

withagoat · 07/03/2011 17:53

;) location wise and date

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Chaotica · 07/03/2011 17:52

withagoat - why can't it be nazi? (I know plenty of teachers who don't know everything. Maybe you do. Whatever - either my teacher or you don't know...)

withagoat · 07/03/2011 17:48

he seems to be ONLY kid - with no memory of pre camp life.
its odd.
and no ref to his dad

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withagoat · 07/03/2011 17:47

cant be nazi( thansk for history tip - am a teacher)

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Chaotica · 07/03/2011 17:45

withagoat - read some history. There were hundreds of kids in labour camps (often secretly).

As far as I know, there weren't camps in Bulgaria. Might be somewhere in former Yugoslavia, Greece or Romania...

Haven't read the book since I was about 9, and then we were told it was a nazi concentration camp. I thought David was Jewish (but there were plenty in the camps who weren't).

Themumsnot · 07/03/2011 17:39

stupid crossouts

Themumsnot · 07/03/2011 17:39

I seem to remember when we studied it in school being told the author had based it loosely on Communist labour camps, but have absolutely no evidence for this as it was all of 30 years ago and I was busy carving some boy's initials in my desk.

ZZZenAgain · 07/03/2011 17:36

no I'm ashamed to say that is my best typing style

withagoat · 07/03/2011 17:36

lol

you on an ipad?

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ZZZenAgain · 07/03/2011 17:35

sorry about all the tipos

ZZZenAgain · 07/03/2011 17:35

so born in a csmp? I know in Stalinist Russia there were children born in the camps and they were left during the day in some type of nursery set up because the mothers were working all hours from early morning to late night and so they essentially grew up knewing no world outside the camp.

However if the mother was elsewhere, I cannot really see how this came about unless mother left and the father was interned, no relatives to take in the baby so the baby went to the camp too?

Stumped and clutching at straws obviously

withagoat · 07/03/2011 17:30

he has no memory pre camp

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ZZZenAgain · 07/03/2011 17:29

read the book and come back and explain everything

please

ZZZenAgain · 07/03/2011 17:28

well nazi you know would have been a waiting room to death, some dc were there for a while...

communist I don't know. The mother is elsewhere - in Denmark or some place so I don't know why the boy would have been interned or even how old he is supposed to be. I mean is he 15 or 9?

withagoat · 07/03/2011 17:27

why is a kid IN a labour camp
com or nazi?

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withagoat · 07/03/2011 17:26

bulgaria

blimey
"& parts of the internet agree with me"

lol

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withagoat · 07/03/2011 17:26

oh GOD i forgot about this thread

right

will read

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Themumsnot · 07/03/2011 15:19

I always thought the author was deliberately making David's background vague, although it seems clear the camp he is escaping from is in post-war Eastern Europe. As far as I can remember he doesn't know if he is Jewish or not but comes to the conclusion that he isn't.

ZZZenAgain · 07/03/2011 15:00

yes I am going to have to reread it too. See there is a film based on this book

PrettyCandles · 07/03/2011 14:59

He's been imprisoned with, and brought up by, men of many cultures and fairly high levels of education, so it's quite possible that he had been exposed to many different philosophies. I certainly had the impression that the prisoners were very tolerant of each other. And then the priest tells him that there's only one way of thinking about god, when David has seen quite clearly that there are many ways.

Come to think of it, doesn't he make up his own prayers?

I'm going to have to re-read it!

nickelprincess · 07/03/2011 14:55

i think it's something like that - he says at one point about him being sure there's more than one god, because the priest is talking to him about God, and says that it's the same god, and he said it isn't the same god.

ZZZenAgain · 07/03/2011 14:54

I don't know, really I read this book so long ago but I assumed so, yes. Maybe OP knows?

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