The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

Name: The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
Author: John Boyne
ISBN: 9789654824521

by John Boyne

Ages 11–13 Reading age 10 Novel Set in the past movingthoughtful

Bruno's family move to a house beside a long wire fence, and he makes friends with a boy in striped pyjamas on the other side.

A story about children and families, moving and thoughtful in tone. We would put it with children of 11–13, and at a reading age of about 10 for reading alone.

Worth knowing before you buy

Death in wartime
A death or grief
A character dies

None of this makes it a bad book — often the opposite. It is here so you can decide whether it is right for your child now or in a year or two.

Our take on this book

Bruno, the nine-year-old son of a Nazi commandant, is baffled and lonely when his family moves to a bleak new house beside a place he calls 'Out-With', where through the fence he befriends a boy in striped pyjamas named Shmuel — and the reader understands, with growing horror, everything Bruno does not. John Boyne's novel is a fable about the Holocaust told through one child's terrible innocence, and its restraint and its devastating ending have made it one of the most widely read and discussed books on the subject for young people. It is, by its nature, a profoundly upsetting book dealing with the death camps, and it needs an older, prepared reader and ideally a guiding adult, at school or home, to talk it through. For a mature reader of eleven upward it is unforgettable and important; parents should know its subject and its ending in advance, as it is emotionally heavy by design and often studied rather than simply read.