The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

by John Boyne

[Stephanie]

This review was originally posted on Once Upon a Chapter



Where do you even start to write a review for a book like The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne? It's not something you want to call fantastic because the subject matter is so serious. Really what Boyne has done is brilliant. He's taken the scariest part of WWII, Auschwitz, and scaled it down to something a child can come to terms with. He does this and is still able to do it without all of the horrifying details that go along with it.

Bruno and his family move to the middle of nowhere when his father accepts authority over Auschwitz. Bruno struggles to adapt but makes the best of it and makes friends with a child from the "farms".

Reading this book written for a child as an adult was difficult but not int he way that you'd think. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas showed that during some of the most brutal years in recent history innocent still existed. Seeing that innocence juxtaposed with such depravity was hard to grasp. I hope to read more of Boyne's work in the future.