欧宝娱乐

** spoiler alert ** Shannon, don't read this until you've finished!

This novel held my interest and frustrated me most of the time. The naivete of the protagonist was annoying, but probably typical of a 9-year-old or someone ignorant to the ways of the world? Although, I have an almost-9-year-old and found that the two can't possibly be the same age--seemed semi-unrealistic. Knowing what is happening as an adult reader, those things that the protagonist can't string together, was certainly an important and deliberate effect of the author's writing, but it again was unrealistic historically. There is no way that a 9 & 10-year-old child of a Commandant would never have heard the word "Jew", even while living next door to a concentration camp. Um...Hitler Youth? Perhaps I just need to experience the novel as if I were 13 so that these details would stop bothering me. I thought the malapropism "Out-with" for Auschwitz was poignant, as well as the clever plot event at the end. However, I feel that the author missed an opportunity at the end by not having the Commandant realize the full truth of what had happened--this could have led to a much more powerful resolution.

My favorite parts were when Bruno was confused as to why he wasn't "allowed" to go to the other side, when the two boys in the "pajamas" looked exactly the same, when Bruno demonstrated how horrible one could act (betrayal, twice) when afraid to stand up for what's right, and when the author ended by saying, "Nothing like that could ever happen again. Not in this day and age."

From reading the post-its of a middle-schooler in this book (leftover from the previous library user), it is obvious that this book would be useless to someone who doesn't know the basics already of the Holocaust. Overall, I felt this book could have been more, but it was a "good" book; I'm just not sure for WHOM.