Bruno and Frida by Tony Bradman

 

2022

hi-lo,  ages 9-11, 10-13, upper primary, Key Stage 2, Lower Secondary, Key Stage 3, Bradman Tony  historical, World War II, Nazi Germany, refugees, Rex Tania,     

The story is set at the end of World War II as the Russians start to occupy Nazi Germany. Bruno’s mother is killed as the Russians attack. Bruno is befriended by the dog Frida, and by an old lady who takes him in for a while.  Frida is a suicide bomber dog and Bruno’s first task when he meets her is to remove her vest.

As the Russian occupation takes hold, Bruno has to move on and try and find his grandparents.  He has to leave the old lady behind. He never sees her again and he never finds out what happens to her. He writes to her daughter but she does not reply.

Bruno finds his grandparents and goes on to live a happy life.  He marries, becomes a doctor and has a family.  His granddaughter interviews him about being a refugee.  The family are sympathetic towards the Syrian refugees.     

This is a Barrington Stoke book and created for less able readers. It is printed on yellow papers.  The text is ragged right and the font  is  plain with simple ‘a’s and ‘g’s.  Paragraphs are indented and there is a line between them as well.  The chapters are short. There are a few monochrome illustrations that help with understanding of the texts and also expand the story. It is 72 pages long.  

 Barrington Stoke claims “Our books are tested for children and young people by children and young people.”  Usually they commission a known writer to create the text and their own editors then work on it to make it suitable for the target reader.  

Tony Bradman offers an historical note at the end and also points out how German attitudes have changed since the end of World War II.

The Boy at the Top of the Mountain by John Boyne

The Boy at the Top of the Mountain by John Boyne 

2015  

Click on image to view on Amazon

Pierrot Fischer, later Pieter, is half French and half German and spends the first part of his childhood in Paris.  He has a best friend who is Jewish, but doesn’t realise this and the significance of it.  His father, a great War veteran, commits suicide and his mother dies of TB. The Jewish family will not take him in – partly because they can’t afford to and partly because they think it will be dangerous for him. He goes first to an orphanage in Orleans and then his German aunt finds out about him. She happens to work at Hitler’s retreat, the Berghof in the Obersalzberg of the Bavarian Alps near Berchtesgaden.  Pieter becomes a Nazi and is quite nasty with it. His Aunt Beatrix and her lover, Ernst, the chauffeur are executed when they try to poison Hitler. Pieter begins to see that what he has become is wrong but only when the Germans are losing World War II and Hitler and the others with him in the bunker in Berlin kill themselves and when he himself is taken prisoner by the liberating soldiers. He eventually finds his old school friend from Paris, Anshel Bronstein, who has become a writer. Bizarrely at this point John Boyne switches from a close third person narrative to first person.   

 

As with The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, (the BBC film of which was first broadcast after the watershed) it is difficult to really pinpoint a reader. Pierrot is seven at the beginning of the story and at the end we see Pierrot / Pieter as a grown man.  Before the epilogue he is eighteen and wears a soldier’s uniform but isn’t ever involved in active combat. There is a scene near the end of the story where he almost rapes the girl he would like to have as a girlfriend.  Yet this would not be too startling for the younger reader as the scene is quite subtle. Clearer is his sense of entitlement that his Nazi upbringing has created. 

 

It’s quite hard also to assess the impact on a reader, again as is the case with The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas;   adults reading the text know what is happening. Boyne writes very much form Pierrot’s / Pieter’s point of view and we see everything through an innocent boy’s eyes. When he is transcribing for Hitler what some important Nazi figures discuss in a meeting, he queries why the showers in the new camps will not have water. However, once we get to the end of the story Pieter refers to Buchenwald, Dachau, Auschwitz and the Geneva Convention as though the readers would perfectly understand this.            

     

Pierrot changes rather too quickly perhaps into a Nazi and then rather too quickly away from these dangerous ideals. 

Nevertheless, the book is well written, engaging and gives the opportunity for some meaningful discussion of many important issues.