The Book of Aron by Jim Shepard

On Monday, December 5th, the Booked for the Day Book Group met to discuss, The Book of Aron by Jim Shepard.  Here are a few things we discussed during the meeting:

• We started our discussion with who enjoyed the book. The majority of the group did not enjoy the book. Two members gave it a positive rating and two started the book but did not finish.
• The majority of the group thought the book was sad but saw its worth in that it was told from a perspective that has not been told before.
• Some of the group thought the book was important because it made us want to learn more about Treblinka, the Warsaw ghetto, and Janusz Korczak. Another positive note in the book is that it made us aware that there were heroes, such as Janusz Korczak, during that time period.
• A few thought that the author never developed the characters, possibly due to the book being written in first person and some of the group described the characters as wooden.
• The book is written from a boy’s point of view, and in a language that he might use, plain and simple. Aron is so young that he doesn’t really have the sophistication to tell his story the way an adult would, but even with that understanding, most of the group could not get enough sense of the character to create empathy for him.
• We talked about other books that the members thought were better written such as Schindler's List, The Boy in the Stripped Pajamas, and Anne Frank.
• We talked about how their lives were so unsettled and in a state of confusion even before they were taken to the camps.
• A couple of the members felt that they have read enough about World War II, and can’t read any more about it.
• We talked about whether this might be a good book for boys in junior high, something that they might be able to relate to since it is written from a ten to thirteen year old boy’s perspective.
• Some of the group kept hoping there might be some small glimmer of happiness for Aron somewhere in the story but there was none.
• As with all Holocaust books it leaves one with a lack of words about how this happened and how the world permitted it to continue. This lead us to a discussion, if we were in similar circumstances, how would we react.

These are just a few things mentioned during the discussion. Please feel free to add any of your thoughts in the comment section.