The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Title: The Book Thief
Author: Markus Zusak
Blurb: Here is a small fact: You are going to die.

1939. Nazi Germany.  The country is holding its breath. Death has never been so busy.

Liesel, a nine-year-old girl, is living with a foster family on Himmel Street. Her parents have been taken away to a concentration camp. Liesel steals books. This is her story and the story of the inhabitants of her street when the bombs begin to fall.

Some important information: This novel is narrated by death.

It's a small story, about:

• a girl
• an accordionist
• some fanatical Germans
• a Jewish fist fighter
• and quite a lot of thievery.

Another thing you should know: Death will visit the book thief three times.

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The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne

Title: The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
Author: John Boyne
Blurb: Nine year old Bruno knows nothing of the Final Solution and 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 boys who live 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 y the terrible process.

Now adapted into a motion picture.

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