Between Shades of Gray

This book automatically caught my attention.  It was so exciting and detailed that I couldn’t help but be pulled in.  It is such an intense story that I have a hard time putting the book down once I start reading it.  While I’m not extremely far into the reading I’m curious as to how the storyline is going to play out.  It seems like the buildup is incredible in the first 100 pages or so, and I hope that this isn’t going to be an anticlimactic story.  It seems like the plot is going to rise into this huge life event, but I don’t expect it to come until late in the novel.  I think this would be a great book to use when teaching about other historical events like the Holocaust.  Most schools teach about the Holocaust, but it seems like few explore the history of the Soviet Union and the issues that they faced.  I think it would be a breath of fresh air for students, especially those who have already learned about the Holocaust and World War II.  Septeys does an awesome job of portraying the struggles that Lithuanians had to face when the Soviets forced them into labor camps, much like Weisel does in his novel Night.  I think it would be a nice escape for students so that they weren’t being taught the same thing over and over.

I also think this book puts adolescents into a very adult situation.  The kids in this novel are thrown into being adults the second they are ripped from their homes.  They don’t have an option to be children anymore, and if they don’t grow up quick, they are going to have even more problems in the future.  I don’t think this book would appeal to adolescents in the same way that Eleanor and Park did, but I do think that it would appeal to their interests.  It seems like high school age students are interested in history topics like the Holocaust, and this novel very much represents a history similar to that.  I’m not sure why it is that students are interested in that history, but in my experience they are.

Thus far in the book I would only give it a B on a grade scale.  While I do think it is very interesting and I think it is important to read it just isn’t as much fun to read as other Young Adult books that I have read.  I don’t want this post to make it seem like I do not like the book, but it isn’t my favorite in terms of pure enjoyment.