Recommendations
Books Like The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
Best books to read after The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne
John Boyne's The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is the Holocaust fable narrated by an innocent child at Auschwitz. These recommendations explore the Holocaust literature tradition for readers who encountered it through Boyne's novel, or offer companion reading in the tradition of the Holocaust story told through an unusual or constrained perspective.
- 1Buy
Night
by Elie Wiesel
The essential Holocaust memoir companion — Wiesel's 120-page account of Auschwitz from inside the experience; for readers who want to understand what Bruno's fence actually separated, Night is the necessary companion.
- 2Buy
The Diary of a Young Girl
by Anne Frank
The essential companion diary — Anne Frank in hiding in Amsterdam before her deportation to Bergen-Belsen; the voice of a Jewish teenager in the same period as the novel, and the primary Holocaust document for the age group that most reads The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.
- 3Buy
Number the Stars
by Lois Lowry
The Newbery Medal companion — Annemarie Johansen helping her Jewish friend escape to Sweden during the German occupation of Denmark; more historically accurate than Boyne's novel and the most celebrated Holocaust novel for the same age group.
- 4Buy
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit
by Judith Kerr
The companion autobiographical novel for young readers — Anna, based on Kerr herself, fleeing Germany with her family just before Hitler comes to power in 1933; the classic semi-autobiographical novel about a Jewish child's escape that predates and parallels The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.
- 5Buy
The Tattooist of Auschwitz
by Heather Morris
The Auschwitz companion for adult readers — the true story of Lale Sokolov, who tattooed prisoner numbers in the same camp that Shmuel inhabits in Boyne's novel; the companion for readers who want to understand what Auschwitz was actually like for the people inside the fence.
- 6Buy
Maus
by Art Spiegelman
The Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic memoir companion — Spiegelman's father's story of surviving Auschwitz, the most formally inventive and the most emotionally honest Holocaust narrative; the companion that bridges the gap between children's Holocaust fiction and the real historical record.
- 7Buy
The Book Thief
by Markus Zusak
The German child's perspective companion — Liesel Meminger in wartime Germany, Death narrating; shares Boyne's interest in a German child's perspective on events that the child cannot fully understand, but is more historically grounded and more complex.
- 8Buy
Sarah's Key
by Tatiana de Rosnay
The French child perspective companion — a ten-year-old Jewish girl in the Vel d'Hiv Roundup and the contemporary journalist who discovers her story; the adult novel that most closely parallels Boyne's interest in a child's perspective on the Holocaust.
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