Nazis – DaneCobain.com

John Boyne – The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas | Review

Title: The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

Author: John Boyne

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 216

Rating 2/5

I’d heard such good things about this book and it left me so disappointed. I just struggled to suspend my disbelief throughout, and it also felt as though the author was constantly trying to exploit the reader’s emotions. On the back, it implied that it was for adults, whereas I felt it was more like middle grade. And then you can see the ending coming from a mile away, as soon as Bruno discovers that he can tunnel beneath the fence and into Auschwitz.

Speaking of which, how was he able to spend so much time speaking to a Jewish kid? Where were the guards? Why didn’t the kid just climb under the fence and escape? How had a 9-year-old living in Berlin in 1942 never heard of Hitler? And if his father was high up enough for Hitler to be paying them house visits, why wasn’t Bruno in the Hitler Youth? And why, at the end, do the Nazis randomly gas an arbitrary group of Jews that happen to be standing together instead of specifically targeting the sick, the elderly and the unfit to work? Weird.

Click here to buy The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.

Terry Deary – The Blitzed Brits | Review

Title: The Blitzed Brits

Author: Terry Deary

Type: Non-Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 140

Rating: 7/10

Terry Deary – The Blitzed Brits

The Blitzed Brits isn’t the best Horrible Histories book, but it’s still worth a read – in my mind, the Vicious Vikings and the Rotten Romans made for better reads. Still, this does give a valuable glimpse in to the dangerous world of The Second World War.

Let’s be honest, it’s a period in British history that even I’m proud of, and I’m hardly patriotic. But the Brits made a name for themselves for stoicism and resilience, and they lived up to their reputation when they stood up to the Nazis during World War II.

As with any war, it’s the human stories that really grab your attention – Deary captures the essence of their stories like a master.