Night A terrifying account of the Nazi death camp horror that turns a young Jewish boy into an agonized witness to the death of his family...the death of his innocence...and the death of his God. Penetrating and powerful, as personal as The Diary Of Anne Frank, Night awakens the shocking memory of evil at its absolute and carries with it the unforgettable message that this horror must never be allowed to happen again.We read this story in my tenth grade class with my student teacher, Joe. (he's doing a great job by the way....like so good that my students may not want me back!) Anyway, I love this book so much because of how Wiesel captivates me each time and how I always cry when the little boy is hanged in front of 10,000 men and someone asks, "Where is God?" and Wiesel responds to himself that he was up there on the gallows... SHIVERS. I also love this book because all of my non-readers, even though it is written at a low-level for high school, the content is so high and rich that my students BURN through this book. It's beautiful!
Does anyone have a favorite holocaust book?
I'm going to say, The Diary of Anne Frank. I had to read it for school and do an oral report. It was so touching, and since Im German and that's where all my family live (I live in Canada - I've never lived in Germany but both my parents did) it touched my heart deeply. I've never heard of Night but I'll have to look for it in the library :) Thanks for the review!
ReplyDeleteI love the diary of anne frank as well... I am going to be teaching 8th grade netx year and its on my "to do list" What type of oral report did you do on it? I highly recommend Night!
ReplyDeleteI love Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolan. It starts out with a teenage girl who does not want to go to her families Seder dinner. She keeps saying "Why do we have to remember?" By the end of the book, she understands why it is so important we remember.
ReplyDeletea quote:
"We all have such stories. It is a brutal arithmetic. But I - I am alive. You are alive. As long as we breathe, we can see and hear. As long as we can remember, all those gone before are alive inside us."
Makes me cry...
This is a really powerful book. One of the teachers at my school read the Boy with the Striped Pyjamas to Year 6 (aged 10-11) and it had a really dramatic impact on them. The children I teach (age 7-8) are a bit young for the holocaust.
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