Chrissy’s Review: Prisoner B-3087 by Alan Gratz

Prisoner B-3087
written by Alan Gratz
published by Scholastic Inc., 2013

find it here: (affiliate links) Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Apple Books, Target, Walmart, Kobo, Book Depository, Goodreads

Did I enjoy this book? My son read this book last year and loved it. It made an impact on him. He wanted me to read it, and I finally got a chance. It is an amazing story of survival. I can’t believe what Jack Gruener went through as a child. This is a middle grade book, and I think it is appropriately written for that age group. It is a tough read. I enjoyed that it showed Jack’s life before the war, during, in the concentration camps, and after. It was heartbreaking, but it also had hope. I couldn’t put it down.

Would I recommend it? I would recommend it for any middle grade reader.
 

 
About the book – from Goodreads: Survive. At any cost.

10 concentration camps.

10 different places where you are starved, tortured, and worked mercilessly.

It’s something no one could imagine surviving.

But it is what Yanek Gruener has to face.

As a Jewish boy in 1930s Poland, Yanek is at the mercy of the Nazis who have taken over. Everything he has, and everyone he loves, have been snatched brutally from him. And then Yanek himself is taken prisoner — his arm tattooed with the words PRISONER B-3087.

He is forced from one nightmarish concentration camp to another, as World War II rages all around him. He encounters evil he could have never imagined, but also sees surprising glimpses of hope amid the horror. He just barely escapes death, only to confront it again seconds later.

Can Yanek make it through the terror without losing his hope, his will — and, most of all, his sense of who he really is inside?

Based on an astonishing true story.

 

 

 

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** This post first appeared on Every Free Chance Books (everyfreechance.com) on October 2, 2019.