Blog #4...5?...4?

This past week, I finished up The Boy In The Striped Pajamas, by John Boyne. I usually wouldn't pick up a book that was as short as this one, especially with a title like the one it has. It comes across as a children's book. However, I went far enough to open the inside cover. Instead of the regular summary of the storyline, it had this.
"If you start to read this book, you will go on a journey with a nine-year-old called Bruno. (Though this isn't a book for nine-year-olds.) And sooner or later you will arrive with Bruno at a fence.[...]"
That caught my interest and I started reading. Then entire book only took me about five collective hours. It ended up being a book about the Holocaust. What I found interesting was that the protagonist is the son of a German Nazi General. Normally, in Holocaust books, the point of view is that of a Jew with five brothers and sisters hiding somewhere or escaping. Bruno, however, moved to a nice home on a new plot of land. The reader doesn't find out until a little over half way through the novel that the land is actually a concentration camp.
After reading this, I started to think about perspective. Although Bruno is only a young boy, his friendship with the boy on the other side of the fence made the most moving of all the stories I've heard or read. The simplicity of the story makes the reader wonder about the other side of the war, the side that wasn't told. It's important to change perspectives from time to time. Even just trying to visualize how something looks from another's eyes will give one a new perspective on their lives.
Another interesting quote was, "Bruno started to think more and more about the two sides of the fence and the reason it was there in the first place." In the eyes of the two boys on either side, there is no difference between them. In the eyes of everybody else, the difference is life or death.
From the mysterious beginning, to the unexpectedly tragic ending, this book had my mind racing from the point of view of every single character.

Boyne, John. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. New York: David Fickling Books, 2006.