The Boy in the Striped Pajamas Lesson Plan

When The Boy in the Striped Pajamas was published in 2006, it received rave reviews and was almost immediately marked as a “classic” in children’s literature. It tells the story of Bruno, an innocent and naïve nine-year-old German boy who has to move away from his home in Berlin to the area near a concentration camp where his father is the Commandant. Throughout the novel, Bruno fails to understand the horrors of the concentration camp, even after he meets, talks through the barbed-wire fence to, and becomes close friends with Shmuel, a Jewish boy who lives in the camp. Ultimately, through his lack of understanding and a series of strange choices characteristic of nine-year-old boys,...