Point of View

Alan Gratz writes the novel with a first-person point of view, from the perspective of Yanek, a young Jewish boy from Krakow who lives through the Holocaust. This enables him to explore experiences and themes intimately intertwined with the historical events that transpired during this genocide through the lens of someone who lived it personally. The reader experiences Yanek’s emotions and thoughts directly, revealing nuance and dynamism that would not be possible through a third-person account or a simple historical description of the events.

Yanek is also a biased narrator in that he recounts his story retrospectively; this is significant in that he has survived the events and thus knows he will live through the ordeals he describes. This was not, however, clear to him at the time he lived them, and it is thus with the advantage of hindsight that he imparts his...