Prisoner B-3087

charlesh20 - This book Prisoner B-3087 is an amazing book with full of determination! This book is based on a true story! This book can let you realised that if you never give up then even you encounter impossibles situations eventually you will overcome it. From this story I learned about life lesson, your life might be miserable and had no hope but if you never give up and has a strong mind at the end you will succeed. This book really touched my heart,this book is basically about a boy named Yanke, he is a Jewish, at that time the Nazis have control most of Europe . Everything he have and everyone he love is taken away from him. Yanke himself has became a prisoner and he has a number (B-3087) tattooed on his wrist. Yanke trying to get his family out of the concentration camp and also get him self out of the living hell, because in the concentration camp he is destiny to face to death by anytime. He is trying to survive thought the concentration camp. I personally think this book brings me and teaches me and also help me understand same important lessons in my personal life, I am struggling on my grade, because I didn't have the mind of determination, I am kind of giving up, but from this book I've seen this whole thing differently and make my mind to do the impossible to improve myself. I would say this story have clearly stated the struggles of the people to survive in the concentration camp, I can feel like I am in the concentration camp and have the a big problem to be resolved.I need the determination and strength to overcome my problems instead of escaping from them. The book is writhed in a very special way with advance word choice, the content of the book, the story structure of the whole story and with the simple sentences to bring and shows out the whole idea of this book. I recommend this book for 6th to 8th graders!

February 11, 2013
The Nazis killed more than one million Jewish children and teenagers; Jack (Yanek) Gruener, who was 10 when Krakow, Poland, fell, was a rare survivor. “Survive,” however, hardly seems adequate to describe what unfolds in these pages. Having lost his parents and close relatives just as he entered adolescence (Yanek has a secret bar mitzvah in a basement of the Krakow ghetto), the boy is totally alone as his life becomes a roll-call of nightmares: Trzebinia, Bir-kenau (where his arm is tattooed with the
number in the book’s title), Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Gross-Rosen. Yanek is finally liberated at age 16, when American soldiers arrive at Dachau. Gratz (Fantasy Baseball) has fictionalized some aspects of Gruener’s life to “paint a fuller and more representative picture of the Holocaust as a whole,” and this determination to be exhaustively inclusive, along with lapses into History Channel–like prose, threatens to overwhelm the story. But more often, Gratz ably conveys Yanek’s incredulity (“Not long ago, all these half-dead creatures around me had been people”), fatalism, yearning, and determination in the face of the unimaginable. Ages 10–14. Agent: Barry Goldblatt, Barry Goldblatt Literary.

January 15, 2013
If Anne Frank had been a boy, this is the story her male counterpart might have told. At least, the very beginning of this historical novel reads as such. It is 1939 and Yanek Gruener is a 10-year old Jew in Krakow when the Nazis invade Poland. His family is forced to live with multiple other families in a tiny apartment as his beloved neighborhood of Podgorze changes from haven to ghetto in a matter of weeks. Readers will be quickly drawn into this first-person account of dwindling freedoms, daily humiliations and heart-wrenching separations from loved ones. Yet as the story darkens, it begs the age-old question of when and how to introduce children to the extremes of human brutality. Based on the true story of the life of Jack Gruener, who remarkably survived not just one, but 10 different concentration camps, this is an extraordinary, memorable and hopeful saga told in unflinching prose. While Gratz's words and early images are geared for young people, and are less gory than some accounts, Yanek's later experiences bear a closer resemblance to Elie Wiesel's Night than more middle-grade offerings, such as Lois Lowry's Number the Stars. It may well support classroom work with adult review first. A bone-chilling tale not to be ignored by the universe. (Historical fiction. 12 & up)

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June 1, 2013

Gr 6-10-"If I had known what the next six years of my life were going to be like, I would have eaten more. I wouldn't have complained about brushing my teeth, or taking a bath, or going to bed at eight o'clock every night." Yanek Gruener was 10 years old when the German army invaded Poland in 1939 and trapped his family inside the walls of the Jewish ghetto in Krakow. Over the course of World War II, he saw his parents deported by the Nazis and survived 10 different concentration camps. Through Gratz's spare, persistent prose, the story of the boy's early life unfolds with the urgency and directness necessary for survivor stories. While some liberties have been taken, with the permission of Gruener and his wife, Ruth, also a survivor, the experiences and images come directly from the Grueners' collective memories of the war. An author's note provides further biographical information. A powerful story, well told.-Sara Saxton, Tuzzy Consortium Library, Barrow, AK

Copyright 2013 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2013
Grades 5-8 When Hitler's army entered and occupied his native Krakw, 10-year-old Yanek knew his life might change, but he had no idea of the horror that lay ahead. His remarkable survival story begins with a dramatic, emotional punch and then chronicles such moments as his secretive bar mitzvah in a warehouse basement, the systematic round up of Jews, and his deportation to the Plaszow concentration camp, the first of 10 camps he would suffer but survive. He recalls encounters with such Nazi figures as the sadistic Amon Goeth and describes acts of wanton, viscious brutality. In an appended note, Gratz explains that the novel is based on actual events in survivor Jack Gruener's life but he has taken liberties with some times and events to provide a better overview. The account includes basic historical information including essential aspects of WWII. A map would have been helpful, but this essentially true story is a good starting point for students unfamiliar with the Holocaust. Pair it with Doreen Rappaport's Beyond Courage (2012) and Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)