Conor Kennelly
Independent reading
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

For term two, I chose to read “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” by John Boyne. I picked this book because this summer I visited some death camps in Germany and I was shocked by some of the things I saw while I was there. I wanted to see the war through someone’s eyes who was not jewish and see how they lived during that time period in Europe. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a story about two kids who become the most unlikeliest friends during the war. The story starts off with a nine­year­old boy named
Bruno and his family. They have just moved from their lovely home in Berlin to a new house in an unfamiliar place called Auschwitz. There are places where Bruno is not allowed to go but being a nine­year­old boy he can not help himself. One day, he wanders into an area where he is not allowed to go and sees a fence. He follows the fence and finds a boy around his age sitting on the floor named Shmuel and this is the start of their friendship. Bruno is fascinated by the boy because he is wearing striped pajamas and had an arm band with a yellow star on it. Bruno keeps going to the fence to spend time with
Shmuel and he brings him food. One day Shmuel says he can not find his parents and he thinks somethings happened to them. Bruno asks Shmuel to get him some pajamas so he can go across the fence and fit in. While inside the Nazis round a up a bunch of