I found this book very interesting because you see a war in the eyes of a kid who knows nothing. The author uses a teqnique wich called my attention, he says everything and at the same time nothing. You just guess a lot of things, I don't know how to say it though.
Just wanted to say: buy it, it's a woderful purchase and you won't be ble to put it down.

A bad thing: too short, perhaps.

This book gives an amazing insight into how WW2 is viewed through the eyes of an innocent boy. It is a total page turner that is well and truly worth the read.

I ordered this book without being sure what to expect. When I got it, I read it all in one night, as I couldn't put it down. Seeing the horrors of the Holocaust through the eyes of a nine-year-old boy puts a twist on it that I'd never thought of before. The story pulls you in, you can't help but feel for Bruno and Shmuel. The author does a wonderful job of writing with a child's naive perspective.
The ending has a horrifying twist that I wasn't expecting, but I think it made it more touching and poignant to NOT sugarcoat things.
a very touching story of love, friendship, and heartache during a very dark time in the history of humanity.
Excellent. Highly recommended.

i found out about this book after seeing the preview for the upcoming movie. the book was spectacular. it was a fast read but from an incredible perspective and a chilling story.

i found out about this book after seeing the preview for the upcoming movie. the book was spectacular. it was a fast read but from an incredible perspective and a chilling story.

Its not Harry Potter, its comes close to showing a personal side like Jason Steed adn its not as much fun as Alex Rider, but its worth a read. Poorly written or unedited, but uts raw and a good book for young and old.
We or I have been spoilt, I read the Harry Potter books, I read the Alex Rider books and I have just finished Jason Steed, so anything else as alot to live up to. It may disturb some younger readers, but it also informs them of what life was like during the holocaust and through a childs eyes. Its well worth the 4 hours it took to read.

Its not Harry Potter, its comes close to showing a personal side like Jason Steed adn its not as much fun as Alex Rider, but its worth a read. Poorly written or unedited, but uts raw and a good book for young and old.

Written as an allegory or perhaps a pseudo-fable, "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" is one of those rare finds that enables the reader to explore familiar territory in a new way and from a different perspective.

While we have (hopefully) all read or heard countelss Holocaust tales, this one is told from a new and indeed daring viewpoint - that of the naieve nine year old son of a Nazi Commandant, who has no idea the evils and horrors surrounding him. In fact, he can't quite understand why the people on the "other side of the fence" get to wear striped pajamas and play with each other all day while he's confined in his new home at "Out-With."

This is a novel for EVERYONE- I truly believe children as well as adults will gain so much from reading it, regardles of their race, religion, nationality or background. It is short and extremely fast-paced- the average reader should be able to read it entirely within a day or two, however it will continue to haunt you and invade your thoughts for weeks on end.

While some potential readers will avoid this one perhaps because it is so hard to read about the Holocaust, I can't stress highly enough that this is a "MUST READ" and one that will have you smiling and laughing along the way- a rare reaction to a story built upon the evils of the Holocaust. Furthermore, this story is not only about the Holocaust, but applies equally to all those situations in which there are groups of people on two sides of a "fence" - it is applicable to the current and past crises in Darfur, genocides throughout the ages, and even those less obvious ones found in our school yards or our own neighborhoods across the county.

I liked this book alot. I can't really describe it that well without giving it away but it's very good. It's well written and I like the approach John Boyne used on the subject.
This book is also being turned into a movie coming out in the US in November 2008. So if you like reading books and then watching the movie that goes with it....
But very powerful and just very good.

PS, its also sad

... in the negative meaning of the word.

After hearing a lot of good about this book and seeing on the cover it is "soon to become a major movie" I decided to pick it up before it would hit cinema. I wish I didn't.

Why?
1) The plot is very thin and you can see the end -dramatic as it is- coming halfway through the story.
2) The plot is also very unbelievable. Two boys meeting on a silent spot for over a year in a place like Auschwitz? And oh yeah, exactly on a place where there's a hole in the fence??
3) There are a lot of continuancy errors in the writing (e.g. on one page it is said that he has forgotten the names of all his friends, but on the page before that he mentions them all)
4) And this point is the worst for me (because of this it was impossible for me to feel one with the character and it kept irritating me througout the book): Out-with (Bruno, the 9-year old boy through whose eyes the story is told, thinks this is the name of the camp). It took some time before I realized what was meant with it. And why? Because I thought Bruno was a German boy. And there is no way a German boy would understand Auschwitz as Out-with. The camp would have to be called Ausmitz or something like that. So either Bruno is a bit deaf or he thinks in English.

The only positive thing I can think about this book is that it is easy reading and it will take only two hours of your time.

Thhis is the best book that I have read.
It gives a child's eye view of the holocaust.
I read it and then gave it to my son to read.
It creates a fabulous way to dialogue about a difficult subject.
Amazing read. A must Read.

A sappy story that tries to denounce the absurdity of the Holocaust by looking at it through the eyes of two children that, despite being as involved as children could be, cannot even begin to comprehend the situation. This book is really quite lame for adult reading; it never made me care enough about any of the characters. I think the right audience is probably kids in their early teens. Problem is, kids in their early teens probably don't know much about the Holocaust, so a portrayal from a child's view that can't even say Führer or Auschwitz properly is surely not going to help them understand. (The use of words by Bruno like "Fury" or "Out-With" to refer to those also didn't make a lot of sense to me, particularly because Bruno speaks German, not English.) I was gifted this book and had been told it was being praised by critics, but found it to be a total letdown.

I bought this for my (12-year-old) daughter's summer required reading assignment. Once she got into it, she asked many great questions about the era itself. She was constantly making exciting guesses as to who the father was.

As others said, the author really botched it with the main character: to imagine that any able-minded German 9-year-old, and a son of a high ranking SS commander to boot, would not have heard of Jews (and hated them) and would not know who the Fuhrer was, or how to pronounce it, is completely preposterous.

Furthermore, I found it offensive that the plot went as far as to suggest that two boys could have frequent conversations for almost a year along the unguarded fence. The Jewish boy would have been sent to the gas chamber upon arrival.

The result is a "Holocaust-lite" book that I find extremely objectionable.

I literally just finished reading this novel about ten minutes ago. I found myself just staring at the last page, waiting for some grand explanation to pop out and make it all better, but, of course, that did not happen.

This book is deep, and it really makes you think. What would you do in Bruno's situation? Though the vocabulary and style of writing makes it appear as a book for young readers, the topic is definitely of a different matter.

In 2009, I intend to teach John Boyne's "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" as part of an undergraduate Holocaust education class. However, I will be including the novel in the syllabus because it is an excellent example of a highly flawed Holocaust text, of which educators need to be wary. A text, by the way, that has been very well received by critics and the general reading public.

Boyne's "fable" is certainly well written, it is accessible (to both teenagers and adults), it is memorable, and it is even profound. But these attributes are overshadowed by Boyne's carelessness; the plot has problematic historical inaccuracies that are incredibly misleading and - I believe - damaging to the goals of Holocaust education.

(1) We discover that Shmuel, the title character and a prisoner at Auschwitz, is nine years old. However, it is extremely well documented that, upon arrival at Auschwitz (and other Nazi death camps), almost all children under 15 years old were sent immediately to be gassed, as the Nazis could not (or would not) use them as slave labor. The few exceptions to this rule were children who were either slightly younger than 15 and survived by lying about their age or children (of all ages) who were used in forced pseudo-medical experiments, confined to the camp laboratories, and rarely survived. Nine year olds did not wander around Auschwitz. And they certainly could not wander, "for several weeks... almost every afternoon" (p. 150), to the same place by the camp fence, to meet their new friend, who just happened to be the son of a high-ranking Nazi officer.

(2) Which brings us to Bruno, the protagonist, the son of the Kommandant of Auschwitz. Bruno is also nine years old (he and Shmuel, they discover quickly, were born on exactly the same day). Bruno's age is also highly problematic. We realize quickly that Bruno is naïve to what his father does for a living and where he and his sister have been brought to live. Bruno is also ignorant to the existence of the Jews - until he meets his new friend, Shmuel. Again, history - and common sense - would reveal this to be practically impossible. All German children were educated, from an early age, about the Jews. Children were taught - through carefully designed books and school lessons - that the Jews were the "parasites" of society; sub-humans to be loathed, oppressed, and discarded. Children joined youth groups and attended rallies that made the Nazis' perceptions of the Jews very clear. It is practically impossible for a nine year old German boy in 1940s Nazi Europe - the son of the Kommandant of Auschwitz, no less! - to have entirely missed what was considered a vital piece of German education.

Now, you might ask: If the story is so compelling, accessible, and thought-provoking, then does it really matter that there are these inaccuracies? Yes. It does. It matters a great deal. If a goal of Holocaust education is to try to understand how and why the Holocaust occurred, so as to help us prevent current and future genocides, then we must try our best to understand how and why the Nazis did what they did to distinct groups of people that they considered "unworthy of life." To truly understand the Nazis' intentions and methods, it is imperative that we include in our considerations their policies of (a) gassing all Jewish children under 15 years old and (b) teaching all German children to hate Jews. If these two policies become distorted - or even ignored - when teaching about the Holocaust, then we might never learn the core lessons of these world-changing events.

It is important to point out that my problem is not necessarily with historical inaccuracies alone (Jane Yolen's time-travel fantasy "The Devil's Arithmetic" comes to mind as another impossible tale); my problem lies in an author's intentions and misadventures. Yolen uses time-travel as a tool to engage her young readers in Holocaust content, while keeping historical accuracy intact. But Yolen knows, just as well as her readers, that time-travel is entirely and so obviously unfeasible. Unfortunately, by the end of his fable, Boyne comes across just as unaware about the problems in his own writing as the naïve enthusiasts who claim that "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" is an important Holocaust text. I still encourage adults (and only adults) to read this book, but to read it only because it reminds us to be wary of badly researched historical fictions that, in the end, teach us little about the true lessons of history.

This is an excellent addition to Holocaust literature for young adults. When nine-year old Bruno and his family move to "Off with" because of the "Fury", he is confused and angry- throughout the book, Bruno never really learns what is happening next door. Showing the camps through the eyes of a child on the outside of the fence was a novel technique and allowed for spare descriptions that underlined the looming horror. Once Bruno befriends a young Jewish boy, the reader knows the story isn't going to end well. Despite that knowledge, and the fact that the actual friendship is so unrealistic, Boyne's writing is so powerful that I still found myself tearing up at the end. I highly recommend this book for adults and teens alike.

Bruno is an innocent and sheltered nine-year-old boy from Berlin. His father is an officer in the German army during WWII. After "The Fury" comes to dinner, Bruno is told that "The Fury" has great things in store for his father and they suddenly move from their family home to a not-so-nice house in "Out-With." From his new bedroom window, Bruno can see a high fence. The dirt area inside the fence is barren except for many low huts inhabited by a large number of people, all wearing striped pajamas.

Bruno, who dreams of becoming an explorer, follows the fence until he meets a thin, sad boy named Shmuel, who is sitting on the other side of the fence. The boys discover that they have the same birthday and decide that they are destined to be best friends.

Because the story is told through the eyes of an innocent and sheltered boy who does not understand what "Out-With" is really all about, the violence and brutality is more subdued than in other Holocaust stories I have read. This actually made the ending even more disturbing, as Bruno doesn't see it coming.

My wife borrowed this book from a friend who had just finished it while we were out at the beach for the weekend. He didn't tell her what it was about except to say that it was a must read. When I went to bed last night I picked it up and started reading it. I woke up the next morning and finished it about an hour later...I couldn't put it down. What a powerful story written in such a simple way about a very complex subject. I have just finished writing my recently Bar Mitzvahed older son who is away at camp that I am going to send him this book and I am crying because the story really got to me. I am Jewish and lost over 100 relatives to the Camps during the war. It is sometime very hard to explain what happened during the war and especially hard to get kids to understand what happened to the Jews and others in the Camps. This is a must read for kids and their parents. It is very simply written so it is very easy for kids to read and understand. Yet it is so compelling that even adult readers will appreciate it. Most books of this genre are/were written by Camp survivors and never from the other side. While this story does not make any effort at rationalizing or appolgizing for what the Germans did it does tell the story from that side of the fence. This is a story that you can discuss with your kids at many levels, there are even some thought provoking questions provided in the back of the book that will make for some very interesting discussions.

In my view, this book is to tragedy what pornography is to erotism. The author seems to think that what really happened in Auschwitz was not poignant enough and that it would be a great idea to add another turn of the screw by inventing a totally incredible story. I am not a fanatic of realism. In fact, I love fantasy, but I think that some subject matters benefit from a sober treatment. If someone wants to read a good book about Auschwitz, he or she should turn to Primo Levi's "If this is a Man", in which the Italian author tells of his experience there with great honesty and sensibility. I can assure you that it is moving enough. By comparison, John Boyne's novel looks superficial and cheap.

I had to read this book for school and honestly wasn't looking forward to it.

The book is very powerful, and has a central theme of humility and the ultimate value of human life. I was amazed with the ending - it was not what you expect, but had a lasting impression on me.

I like how the author used the fence to symbolize the division between Jews and Nazis - it was something young children could understand but that adults would also find interesting.

I would definitely recommend this to someone.

While not a realistic Holocaust story, that is clearly beside the point. The simplicity and naïveté with which Boyne portrays the main character in this story is both striking and startling. This was a book written to elicit discussion and an emotional response from readers and succeeded on both counts.

This book wowed me. I lived to see this horrifying event through the eyes of a 10-year-old. Going into this book, I thought I knew what was going to happen, but by the end I was very surprised at the turn of events. I think that anyone of any age, even if it looks like it is a younger kids book with larger print, but if you like the history of the holocaust and even if you know nothing about it, I think that you would find it enjoyable.

Books about the Holocaust are never easy to read. Some are downright terrifying and some make the reader nauseous. This book however approaches this period in history from a new and interesting angle and tells a tale of what might have happened, and in doing so opens up these stories to a whole new generation of readers. The book was originally marketed as a children's book, and then remarketed as adult fiction because of the content. The author claims it is just a book, and soon it will be a major motion picture due out in the fall of 2008.

This is the story of two boys who lose everything they hold dear, yet the reality of their loss is completely different. Bruno's life is changed when his father is given a new job and they move from their five-story home in Berlin to a new home in the country that is only three stories tall. He has lost his 3 best friends in life, and his home with the banister and the attic window that looks out over all of Berlin. His new bedroom window looks over small huts in a fenced-in area where everyone wears striped pajamas. One day while being rebellious and doing what he should never do, he walks along the fence and meets a boy with whom he shares a birthday. Shmuel and Bruno meet most days and sit on the opposite sides of the fence and talk. As their friendship grows Bruno's youthful innocence is challenged.

The novel is told in the third person narrative, but told from a nine-year- old's perspective. Though the reader knows that the story takes place at Auschwitz, Bruno cannot pronounce it, and misunderstood the name from the beginning. Yet in not naming the place the author leaves the story as a much broader tale.

This book is extremely well-written; it takes the reader to a place and time we should never forget, and it reminds us of the human element in all stories. John Boyne has written a book that could become required reading for all school children, and maybe all adults should read it also, lest we forget. So pick it up and walk with Bruno and Shmuel as they develop a growing friendship just sitting and talking through a barbed- wire-topped chain link fence.

(First Published in Imprint 2008-05-02.)

Since reading this book I have bought 5 copies for my 6th grade classroom. This story pulls you into the life of 9 year old Bruno who is unable to understand the life that his family leads. Seeing the Holocaust through his innocent eyes takes the reader on a journey that is riveting. The connection that he forms with Schmuel through the fence and beyond truly speaks to the wisdom of children. When you close the last page, give yourself a few minutes to be with Bruno. Unforgettable!

It's a short book that packs a wallop. Written from the standpoint of a child who was unwittingly part of the Holocaust, it draws its readers in to become eyewitnesses, too. I highly recommend it.

It is a book that haunts you and I know will haunt you every time you think about this theme. Have you read Night by Elie Wiesel? It is similar but with tremendous shocking ending.
It is a story about two boys; very different lives but very similar at the same time. Bruno and Shmuel, the first German and the other one Jewish. Bruno lives right next to the Auschwitz concentration camp, and you can guess where Schmuel lives, the area is divided only by a fence. Bruno sets out to explore the area (as he calls it) and meets Shmuel who lives on the other side of the fence; they for a year just sit there and talk. Both want what the other one has without knowing exactly what they have. The friendship develops up to a point in which Bruno does the unimaginable to be with his one and only friend. I live the rest up to you!
An amazing story of friendship and innocence.
A true page turner! Easy to read and to understand. Few characters, well developed.

I've read many books that fall into the "Holocaust literature" category. This one may actually be a book that is written in a style that COULD be read by a child but should be read by adults. Whether it is suitable for children depends on how sensitive your child is- and how well you think he or she could handle some very graphic details. They aren't "graphic" in the sense of being spelled out in detail but the reader's imagination can fill in the blanks. At age 9, this book would have been far too intense for me - and the main character in this one, Bruno, is age 9.

The author used a technique which was brilliant, taking readers into the mind and thoughts of a child whose father work for the "Fury" (the Fuhrer) and who is sent to live in Out-With (Auschwitz), on the safe side of the fence, in an actual home.

The novel is labeled "a fable" and I think this was a wise choice by both author and publisher. After all, no one knows exactly how a 9 year old son of a German officer would think and young Bruno seems remarkably naive sometimes. But just as light sets off shadows more vividly, I think his exaggerated innocence allows readers to experience the horrors of Auschwitz that much more. For that reason, I don't think the accuracy of Bruno's character is all that important. The effect on the reader (THIS reader, anyway) is profound and deep.

After moving to Out-With (Auschitz) Bruno meets a boy "on the other side of the fence", one who is the same age, a lad named Schmuel. At first Bruno is envious of the boy who gets to wear striped pajamas all day and who seems to have lots of companions.

On Bruno's side there are few playmates and he doesn't realize that he has so much compared to Schmuel. There is a sudden twist in this tale and I can't write about that. I will say it is the one reason adults should read this book before sharing it with children.

The book isn't quite like any other of this type I've read, not even The Diary of Anne Frank. Each chapter has a simple headline (Bruno Makes a Discovery, Bruno Tells a Perfectly Reasonable Lie) that reads like something a child could write. So do the words of each chapter and I think the child's voice should speak to both the child and adult residing in readers. It certainly did for me!

You'll be haunted by this one. If you get the edition with a Reading Guide included, you will find all sorts of extra features, includng an interview with the author, John Boyne.

I sat down and read this book straight through in four hours. It is a wonderfully told story...well-written and captivating. An interesting perspective on the Holocaust. Read it. You'll be glad you did.

Coming from South Africa, where I grew up as a child in the heart of the apartheid regime, this book moved me immensely. As a child I was vaguely & uneasily aware of something being wrong, but it is just the life that I was born into. Children accept and try to make childish sense of their lives. This book should be read and discussed in high schools across the world.

It is so simply written that the ending is a shock that lives within me. I devoured the book in half a day. It left me with ambivalent feelings of horror and satisfaction. I am interested to read more of his work.

I feel at some point all children and there parents should read this book. It is easy reading and the book pulls you in. I felt like I was walking throw the life of the charicters shoes. Great book!!!

The author does a good job of protraying childhood innocence.

It's a quick read with a dramatic ending.

This new book on the Holocaust would make an excellent book for any class where Holocaust is being taught for the first time. The book begins from the point of view, not of the Jews, but from the point of view of the son of a high Nazi official who has come to be the commandant of Auschwitz. The son, left on his own, and knowing nothing about what his father does, begins out of loneliness to go for walks. He finds the camp and becomes friends with a boy wearing "striped pajamas." The ending of the book left me with the word "Wow" and the need to start discussions with adults and students alike.

An interesting and welcoming angle to take which surely can't fail to make children (and adults) think about the horror of the death camps. Although Bruno himself isn't aware of the ironies, the reader certainly is.

Because the story is told through nine year old Bruno, the author is able to use childish descriptions such as a person who unsettles him and who he dislikes makes him "...feel very cold and want to put a jumper on." Yet as often happens when children describe something...they actually describe it perfectly and more poignantly because of their inocence.

Just thinking about this book gives me goose bumps! It was absolutely amazing, but extremely haunting. At the end I started to bawl like a baby! It's a great book, and I would strongly recommend it!

This is one of the most haunting stories about the Holocaust that I have ever read...and I've read over 150 books on the subject. You will not be able to put it down once started and you will not be able to stop thinking of it once you are finished. I highly recommend this book for classroom discussion on the nature of good and evil. superb..profound...intense

My School recommended this book and my son loved it. It was written very well and it was a fast paced read.He read it in 2 days and never wanted to put it down.Thats amazing to me because he is not much of a reader,hes a computer nerd.Its an awesome book even I read it!!

My son was reading this for his school's book club, so I naturally picked it up and as soon as I read the inside cover, I knew I was in for something different. Once it dawned on me what the book's content was going to be about, my first reaction was to stop reading (this was after the first chapter) Such a hard subject, such pain buried beneath the pages, I was sure. Yes, there was pain but also, because it was shown through child's eyes, it was a much different read than I have in the past regarding the Holocaust. It was a great talking tool to use with my son about this horrific event, and I really think he could feel the different sides of that fence. Each in their own way a terrible prison. I do recommend this book, especially to read with your teens when studying WWII. Another note: art work on the cover is brilliant, once you know the story.

A heartbreaking tale about the friendship between two little boys, Bruno and Shmuel, who had no clear understanding of what was surrounding and separating them beside a tall, barbed-wire fence. Delivered by a clear and uncomplicated narrative, the Holocaust is seen through a different perspective -no ghastly descriptions, no monstrosities- and it's recounted with the profound simplicity of a nine-year old child.

Knowing history and considering the time/social frame, I do sort of agree with some reviewers who maintain that the character of little Bruno was perhaps a bit implausible, considering his age and the fact that he was the Nazi Commandant's son at Auschwitz -and for quite a long time-. But it does not matter, at least not to me.

In fact I think that the author was able to convey the innocence of childhood in a very straightforward, raw and achingly touching way, which will linger on because of its wrenching final message. Well done.

I would recommend this book for young readers too (14+).

There's nothing simple about this tale. Many criticize Bruno's unrealistic naivete. This boy is nine years old: what is our excuse? This fable extends beyond the Holocaust. We too are blind to the injustices around us, and Boyne's book chillingly depicts this.

Bruno's not so different from many who destroy others to protect themselves. Yet, despite his flaws, he's human enough to love, to reach out to another. He is ignorant of his effect on another reaching out for him; nevertheless, he reaches for the hand of one in need. In doing so, he sacrifices a part of himself.

This story alternates between being beautiful and unnerving. Despite the devasting ending, one knows this must be the result. When we take from others, we kill our own souls. I have recommended this book to everyone--even to those reluctant readers. It is unforgettable.