So I'm teaching Elie Wiesel's memoir
Night right now and since it's a shorter non-fiction book, I'm having my students also read a WWII/Holocaust FICTION book too.
Three of them are reading
The Book Thief, which is a book I love. Read it twice. Two of the three kids reading it love it and have almost finished it; one of them I can't even get to learn Liesel's name. He keeps skipping around and not appreciating it.
![Annoyed](images/smilies/annoyed.gif)
GRR.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Cassirin
I finished this afternoon. Earlier, I thought I might try to say something intelligent about things I thought/felt as I was reading, but then I actually got to the last few chapters and I'm very "..."
...
One thing I will say is that I enjoyed the fact that this book looks a historical period we generally tend to think we KNOW about, whether from history class or from reading other books, and makes you connect emotionally to it on a different level. I don't know that I've ever read a book set during WW2 from the perspective of a German citizen, specifically a child, and I think the war ends up being just as much a character as anyone else. I kind of felt this way after reading The Help, when I felt like intellectually I understood what the characters were going through before reading, but the book actually took me into the reality of what living that experience was like. I dunno if I'm making sense, but I just enjoyed that the author could do that for me.
You should read
Germany Boy by Wolfgang W.E. Samuel. We read that in my 9th grade World History class back in 2004/2005. It's pretty good. I read it twice; once the summer before, and once during class and even my brother, who doesn't read, read it and liked it and recommended I read it.
It's a memoir like
Night, but it's told from the perspective of a German child citizen, someone similar to Liesel but even more displaced and homeless due to the war.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
cake.ninjak
I just finished. I want to go sit in a hole for the rest of my life now.
I hope you guys enjoyed
The Book Thief, as sad as it is. It's still a gem.