Fritz and Kurt

Product Information

Ultimately, if this book's older relative did for its target audience what this has the ability to do for its own, it's easy to see why the first book was such a success. (And I can't ignore the mention late on of facts that came to light after the first book was presented.) I wish this a similar impact, and I'm grateful for the publishers sending me a review copy. A strong four stars, if not more, from me. Careful consideration and due diligence are parts of the good practice of anyone doing their job properly. This applies to choosing texts for the classroom – it is one of the main reasons Just Imagine exists. When it comes to the well-being of individual children in the classroom, the teacher will ultimately know what is suitable. When it comes to factual and accurate information, we place trust in the authors (including illustrators), editors and publishers to carry out due diligence.

Fritz and Kurt : Jeremy Dronfield (author), : 9780241565742 Fritz and Kurt : Jeremy Dronfield (author), : 9780241565742

In 1938, the Nazis come to Vienna. They despise everyone who is not an Ayran, which meant foreigners, people of colour, traveller folk, gay people and anyone who had different beliefs, especially Jews. Fritz and Kurt’s family are Jews, which puts them in great danger.Summary: Initially seeming too earnest in its Reithian levels of detail, and forever damning the SS as ugly in ways that evoke their own phrenologists, this still ended up a great, wide-access window to the Shoah. This fairly lengthy junior read could well give much more than countless textbooks on the Nazi camp system. When the Nazis take over Austria, four different paths await each of the family's four children. Kurt, the youngest, manages to travel all alone to a new life in America. Edith, the eldest, secures a position as a maid in England while her sister, Herta, stays in Vienna with her mother until both are transported to the Ostland. 14-year-old Fritz is sent to Buchenwald with his father.

Fritz and Kurt | BookTrust

It certainly opened my eyes, just months after John Boyne did an adults-only sequel to his different covers for different ages The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, to see this be a junior rewrite of a mass market adult Holocaust book. I was left with the feeling this felt the need to be more educational than the adult equivalent. I also was left with the feeling that, in being so repetitive, the author did not have a firm grasp on his target audience's intelligence before he started. But I may have been wrong in seeing that as an issue.

Jeremy Dronfield has written a powerful tale that is horrifying and harrowing, probably more so to older readers who have knowledge of just what really happened. Jeremy Dronfield says just enough to tell the true story without giving young children nightmares with graphic details. My granddaughters are very sensitive but I am letting them read this book because they need to know what happened, as does all the next generation, in the hope that never again will the innocent be slaughtered in such a way. Unfortunately, we see that many do not learn the lessons from history.