The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
Nine year-old Bruno knows nothing of the Final Solution or the Holocaust. He is oblivious to the appalling cruelties being inflicted on the people of Europe by his country.
All he knows is that he has been moved from a comfortable home in Berlin to a house in a desolate area where there is nothing to do and no one to play with. Until he meets Shmuel, a boy who lives a strange parallel existence on the other side of the adjoining wire fence and who, like the other people there, wears a uniform of striped pyjamas.
Bruno’s friendship with Shmuel will take him from innocence to revelation. And in exploring what he is unwittingly a part of, he will inevitably become subsumed by the terrible process.
LINK: http://www.johnboyne.com/
Noah Barleywater Runs Away
Eight year-old Noah’s problems seem easier to deal with if he doesn’t think about them. So he runs away, taking an untrodden path through the forest.
Before long he comes across a shop. But this is no ordinary shop. It is a toy shop full of the most amazing toys and brimming with the most wonderful magic. And here Noah meets a very unusual toymaker.
The toymaker has a story to tell and it’s a story of adventure and wonder and broken promises. He takes Noah on a journey. A journey that will change his life.
And it could change yours too.
Stay Where You Are and then Leave
The day the First World War broke out, Alfie Summerfield’s father promised he wouldn’t go away to fight – but he broke that promise the following day. Four years later, Alfie doesn’t know where his father might be, other than that he’s away on a special, secret mission.
Then, while shining shoes at King’s Cross Station, Alfie unexpectedly sees his father’s name – on a sheaf of papers belonging to a military doctor. Bewildered and confused, Alfie realises his father is in a hospital close by – a hospital treating soldiers with an unusual condition. Alfie is determined to rescue his father from this strange, unnerving place . . .
Boy: Tales of Childhood
The unadulterated childhood - sad and funny, macabre and delightful - that inspired Britain's favourite storyteller, Boy speaks of an age which vanished with the coming of the Second World War.
Boy: Tales of Childhood, published in 1984, is a funny, insightful and at times grotesque glimpse into the early life of Roald Dahl. In it, he tells us about his experiences at school in England, the idyllic paradise of summer holidays in Norway, and the pleasures and pains of the local sweetshop in Llandaff, Wales.
The story of how Roald came to write Boy is almost a tale in itself. It started with The Witches. In an early draft of that book, which has an unnamed young boy with a Norwegian grandmother as its narrator, there were three chapters that went into great detail about the boy's childhood. These chapters were actually drawn from Roald's own memories. So the boy in The Witches had a lot in common with his author.
An editor called Stephen Roxburgh was working with Roald at the time, and he thought that those three chapters belonged somewhere else. He suggested to Roald that he might like to re-use them in a book about his own early childhood. Roald did not want to write an autobiography but he thought that this was a very good idea. As he said himself in the introduction to Boy: "This is not an autobiography. I would never write a history of myself. On the other hand, throughout my young days at school and just afterwards a number of things happened to me that I have never forgotten."
LINK: www.roalddahl.com
Between Shades of Grey
In 1941, fifteen-year-old Lina is preparing for art school, first dates, and all that summer has to offer. But one night, the Soviet secret police barge violently into her home, deporting her along with her mother and younger brother. They are being sent to Siberia. Lina's father has been separated from the family and sentenced to death in a prison camp. All is lost.
Lina fights for her life, fearless, vowing that if she survives she will honor her family, and the thousands like hers, by documenting their experience in her art and writing. She risks everything to use her art as messages, hoping they will make their way to her father's prison camp to let him know they are still alive.
It is a long and harrowing journey, and it is only their incredible strength, love, and hope that pull Lina and her family through each day. But will love be enough to keep them alive?
Between Shades of Gray is a riveting novel that steals your breath, captures your heart, and reveals the miraculous nature of the human spirit.
