What readers think of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, plus links to write your own review.

I didn't really like the book because it doesn't show the true horrors of a little 9yr old boy living in Auschwitz. It doesn't even have very historical facts on the Holocaust.

This book was very unrealistic, I Couldn't help but get bored of it after a while. It made it very hard to finish and I would much prefer to have read a history book than this.
I'm in high school, and I would definitely not recommend this book to the learning education centre... unless they want the ACTUAL Facts. Twisted to suit the needs of a seemingly average author

I enjoyed this book because the author really drags you in with enthusiasm with the way he writes and he makes you feel like you are a part of all of it, like in the book.
I found the story sad, gripping and an extremely good read. The points I enjoyed the most was there was a lot for you to discover yourself like in between the lines and the story really made you think you were actually there experiencing it first hand and it really made you sympathise for the Jews back in those time
The things I didn’t enjoy so much is that if you hadn’t seen the film you wouldn’t have realised some aspects of the story
Overall I would give this book a ten out of ten because I think it is appealing for all types of readers.

John Boyne has written a brilliant book he has explained everything very well, he has used the main character as a small boy which makes him ask lots of question as he doesn’t know exactly what is going on.
The story is about a boy called Bruno who moves away from Berlin as his Father has had a promotion so, they move to a house called Out-with which is next to a concentration camp. He then meets a boy called Shmuel who is on the other side of the fence that Bruno soon makes friends with. Then there friendship suddenly comes to an end.
The good bits about the book are the fact that it is based on a historic event.it leaves you hanging on every chapter it makes you have many emotions like sadness, happiness and excitement.

In my opinion this book is very vague. How can John Boyne confuse the difference from an innocent boy to an idiotic boy? The boy should have asked his father in the first place about what was going on in Out-With. Also the author makes it frustrating because of the cliff-hanger technique he is using constantly. You might say that I am only a teenager that read this book because of WWII, but in my defense it is the truth. But of course this book had amazing facts about WWII and how people were tortured and killed by Hitler and his tricks. But honestly the book could have expanded on Hitler, and his whole army of what was truly going on. Maybe it could have told us about Hitler AND his wife for less than 40 hours Eva Braun.

I loved this book, and I think it's one of my favorites!!!!

John Boyne’s novel The Boy in the Striped Pajamas was lacking some important attributes that most good books usually have. Firstly, he used irritatingly simple language. The simplicity of it interrupted the flow of the reading and took away from what the book was actually about. Secondly, the main character, Bruno, was supposed to be young and innocent, but the author didn’t achieve the balance between innocence and unintelligence. No nine year-old could possibly know that little about what was going on. Even if he was sheltered by his parents he might have perceived that there was something going on. The third thing that the book was lacking was what the story was about. A well to-do German family that has family problems is not what grabs a reader’s interest. Weather or not there was an underlying message about life or something, the book was boring and slow moving, going to great lengths to describe unnecessary details.
   The simple language was definitely a big problem. While reading this, a person might find themselves getting bored simply because the words used are simplistic and from a semi-retarded nine year-old’s point of view. This simplicity took away from what the author was trying to say and it made it hard to finish or enjoy the book. The use of the word “Out-With” instead of ‘Auschwitz’ though appropriately childish, was over used and it got old fast. The same thing happened with the author’s use of ‘fury’ instead of Fuhrer, causing the seriousness and significance of that name to disappear.
   Bruno’s innocence came with a price; the semblance of intelligence. Bruno probably could have figured some things out if he only sought after answers. Instead, he decided to accept everything for goodness, like Shmuel. Shmuel was mainly what brought Bruno to an end. Had Bruno stopped, thought about why the people on the other side of the fence looked unhealthy, unhappy and generally not too great to hang out with, he could have at least drawn the conclusion that he didn’t want to be like them. Instead he dresses up as one of them, ignoring the unclean clothes and the starving people, and goes right into the thick of a very very dangerous place. Ultimately this brings about his demise, as with many other stupid people.
   The story is a different story. People usually want to read about something interesting. Not that the book was especially uninteresting, it was just sort of bland. The story centered on a boy in a well to-do German family, and what he thinks is problematic. There were things going on around him, like his mother’s affair, the interment camp and how jews were being treated that were hinted at, but the majority of the story was about how a nine year-old processed things. Mainly what the story was lacking, was differentiation and unpredictability.
   Apparently, this book is meant for both young adults and adults. The simple language made it easier to read, while most of the really important stuff the author was saying was lost, because in order to comprehend the deeper messages, it required more thinking than the language used in the book suggested was necessary. The young adults will read it and not like it because they have to think too much and the story was semi-boring, and the adults will get irritated because of the language and Bruno’s obvious unintelligence and the simple language.

This is an excellent book that shows the innocence of the people who were slaughtered by Hitler. Every school in the US should make this mandatory that all students of the appropriate age read this book or see this movie so this never happens again. My family and I have been to Dachau and have felt the horror. What a shame this even took place!