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3.55 AVERAGE
3.55 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
A very deep and impactful book. I read this when I was 12/13, and it still sticks with me nearly a decade later.
The book is set during WWII, and follows three main characters escaping from the Nazis. They find a zoo and stay there for a night.
It’s an incredible book, and covers a lot of hard themes in an easily understandable manner.
Highly recommend!
The book is set during WWII, and follows three main characters escaping from the Nazis. They find a zoo and stay there for a night.
It’s an incredible book, and covers a lot of hard themes in an easily understandable manner.
Highly recommend!
Hartnett writes with such depth, clarity and compassion. She provides no easy answers, and none of the more obvious heroisms. But the children and the animals that populate this book are heroic nonetheless, in their determination to survive and to dream, despite what they have lost. A deeply moving book, that brings home the realities of war.
Three children traveling across war-ravaged Europe stumble across a tiny zoo in a small bombed out town. When Andrej, Thomas and their baby sister Wilma seek shelter in the zoo for the night they discover that the animals can talk and the children and the animals exchange their sad stories as bombs fall in the night.
I love Sonya Hartnett - her books have a very lyrical, fairy-tale quality to them. This one is no different. Unlike "The Ghost's Child," however, this story is harder to follow in the end. The events have an unreality about them from the very beginning which I was willing to buy into because I liked the characters, description and general feel of the book. The end completely falls apart though and I was left confused and repeatedly re-reading the last chapter to try to figure out what happened. I still have no idea. With a different ending, any ending!, I would have given this book 4 stars.
I love Sonya Hartnett - her books have a very lyrical, fairy-tale quality to them. This one is no different. Unlike "The Ghost's Child," however, this story is harder to follow in the end. The events have an unreality about them from the very beginning which I was willing to buy into because I liked the characters, description and general feel of the book. The end completely falls apart though and I was left confused and repeatedly re-reading the last chapter to try to figure out what happened. I still have no idea. With a different ending, any ending!, I would have given this book 4 stars.
La prima guerra mondiale vista attraverso gli occhi di due fratellini e alcuni animali dello zoo.
The Midnight Zoo by Sonya Hartnett is a magical tale of three children who find a zoo in the midst of a war torn country. Andrej, a Roma was forced to run with his brother and his baby sister after Nazi's capture his community. At the zoo they find that the animals can talk and they share their stories.
This book felt more like real literature than most middle grade books do. It has lots of big concepts that provide lots of potential for real thought and the prose was beautiful. I do wish that there had been more of an overreaching plot to move the story along, however the stories of all the animals and the boys were engrossing and very well written. There is some massive vocabulary in this book (along with beautiful descriptions) making this a good book for advanced readers. However the book is short enough that it is finished quickly.
Appropriateness: This book has a few difficult war scenes and asks questions that will require some higher level thinking skills (or help from an adult) to fully comprehend. I would recommend this book to readers 10-14 with it appealing equally to boys and girls.
This book felt more like real literature than most middle grade books do. It has lots of big concepts that provide lots of potential for real thought and the prose was beautiful. I do wish that there had been more of an overreaching plot to move the story along, however the stories of all the animals and the boys were engrossing and very well written. There is some massive vocabulary in this book (along with beautiful descriptions) making this a good book for advanced readers. However the book is short enough that it is finished quickly.
Appropriateness: This book has a few difficult war scenes and asks questions that will require some higher level thinking skills (or help from an adult) to fully comprehend. I would recommend this book to readers 10-14 with it appealing equally to boys and girls.
Beautifully written and absolutely heartrending. I cried a lot, which made reading aloud difficult. It's perhaps a bit advanced for Caitlyn; she loved the animals and their stories but needed the ending explained. All in all, though, an accessible introduction to WWII, mostly as a terrible thing that really happened (extrapolate to War Is A Terrible Indiscriminate Thing).
This is going to stick with me...but it doesn't really feel like jfiction to me...I say this with all respect to jfiction, it's not that it's "too sophisticated" it's just that it's sophisticated in a different way than really good jfic.