Reviews of the Boy at the Top of the Mountain
Reviewed by Joy Lawn*
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The Male child in the Striped Pyjamas past John Boyne is one of those seminal books that even people who wouldn't regard themselves as big readers have read, or take at least seen the motion-picture show. Its chilling, alternate viewpoint of a holocaust story has equitably won worldwide acclaim.
The outset volume I ever reviewed for the Weekend Australian was one of John Boyne's books for young readers, Noah Barleywater Runs Abroad (see here). It is illustrated by the much-loved Oliver Jeffers.
This fable, with its creative ideas and allusions to puppets, is one of Boyne'southward best works, and it'southward my 2d favourite of his books, after The Male child in the Striped Pyjamas.
Another of Boyne'southward books for younger readers is The Terrible Thing That Happened to Barnaby Brocket. Hidden inside this story is a teaser about a famous author from Byron Bay in northern NSW and it was fun to ask Boyne nigh this when he appeared at the Brisbane Writers' Festival several years ago. I don't want to spoil who the Australian writer is in instance you'd like to guess but his proper noun is at the finish of this review.
And now, ten years after The Male child in the Striped Pyjamas, Penguin Random Business firm Australia has published John Boyne'south companion book, The Boy at the Top of the Mountain. These two novels belong together and their covers are designed similarly. Striped Pyjamas has horizontal rows of blue and white to evidence the pyjama-like clothing worn by concentration camp prisoners and Top of the Mountain has a carmine background with spinous wire forming the matching horizontal lines. Both books focus on a character whose life is entwined with the Nazis in World War 2.
We first see Pierrot Fischer in The Boy at the Summit of the Mount as a normal, innocent boy living in Paris. His mother is French and his begetter German language. His all-time friend, Anshel Bronstein, is Jewish but Anshel's mother tin't afford to prefer Pierrot subsequently both his parents die.
Seven-year-old Pierrot is bullied (a theme that runs throughout the volume) at the orphanage he is sent to but his aunt Beatrix, who is a housekeeper at the Berghof in the Bavarian Alps for a man with a small moustache, soon takes him in. Beatrix and chauffeur Ernst treat Pierrot well, merely Pieter – as he is called while living 'at the top of the mount' – becomes close to the Fuhrer whom he regards as a father figure. Just then Pieter does a terrible, terrible matter.
Boyne's writing is quite literary and here, as he does in many of his novels, he refers to other books, including Emil and the Detectives and Gulliver's Travels .
If y'all enjoyed Morris Gleitzman'due south Once series or Jackie French'due south Pennies for Hitler , then the hard-hitting The Boy at the Superlative of the Mountain is for you lot.
[spoiler alert: the author alluded to, but not named, in The Terrible Thing That Happened to Barnaby Brocket is Tristan Bancks, i of Australia'due south most popular writers for immature people]
*I am utterly thrilled to take the gorgeous Joy Lawn on Children'southward Book Daily. I have known Joy for many, many years and take spent those years being in accented awe of her noesis of Australian children's and YA literature and her well-crafted reviews. I could review books for the adjacent fifty years and still never review on the level that Joy Lawn does. I am honoured to sit on the Griffith University Children's Book Laurels panel of the Queensland Literary Awards with Joy Lawn and Maree Pickering and blest to call Joy Lawn a friend. A more professional bio is below.
Joy Backyard is a freelance writer and reviewer for The Weekend Australian, Books+Publishing and Magpies Magazine, specialising in children's/YA and literary fiction. She judges the Aurealis and Qld Literary awards and is a quondam CBCA estimate. Joy has worked for indie bookshops equally a literature consultant. Joy is fascinated by ideas and images and how authors and illustrators express these with truth and originality.
Source: https://childrensbooksdaily.com/book_reviews/review-of-the-boy-at-the-top-of-the-mountain/
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