But, do we consider that some books might not be in the best interests of the topic you are teaching?

Fritz and Kurt | BookTrust

Like the Auschwitz Museum, Jeremy feels that perhaps fiction “doesn’t have a place in telling the story of the Holocaust. Here, swiftly identifying their skills in bricklaying and stitching, the Kleinmanns stayed alive while up to 150 of their less useful comrades went off each day to be gassed at Birkenau ( Primo Levi was another survivor). He knew it was in preparation, though, and was thrilled that his story would be read by coming generations of young readers. Yes, all this does happen and is vital to the story, but at the appropriate level to maintain a younger reader’s wellbeing. These in their turn leave the younger Kurt at home with his mother and sisters anxious to hear word of an evacuation to Britain or the US, while Fritz and his father are, unknown initially to each other, packed off on the same train to Buchenwald and the stone quarry there.I haven't read Dronfield's book about the Jewish family split by the second world war, but I was fascinated to hear that the author has retold it for a young audience. And yet he has every good reason to want to forget, for his own family’s story is as tragic as it is miraculous.

Fritz and Kurt (Audio Download): Jeremy Dronfield, David Fritz and Kurt (Audio Download): Jeremy Dronfield, David

When it comes to the well-being of individual children in the classroom, the teacher will ultimately know what is suitable. They are grateful to be together: to have each other to lean on for support and their strength, hope and courage is a theme throughout the story. Although, one thing that perhaps does not come across so explicitly in this version, because of the child’s viewpoint, is “their father’s determination to survive. I also was left with the feeling that, in being so repetitive, the author did not have a firm grasp on his target audience's intelligence before he started. The family managed to send two of their children abroad – Edith went to England, and Kurt to America, making the long, dangerous journey on his own aged just ten.Oh my goodness what a hauntingly beautiful, sad, incredible story about two young boys who, in the face of absolute horror, survive. My granddaughters are very sensitive but I am letting them read this book because they need to know what happened, as does all the next generation, in the hope that never again will the innocent be slaughtered in such a way. Jeremy first came across the Kleinmanns’ story when he was asked to find a publisher for an English translation of Gustav’s concentration camp diary. We start with the pair of brothers Fritz and Kurt, and their muckers, doing things any Jewish lad in 1930s Vienna would want to do – kicking things around the empty market place, helping the neighbours, being dutiful when it comes to the synagogue choir and at a vocational school. Of the rise of right-wing politics worldwide, he adds: “I’m not a Trump supporter by any means, and I’m very much concerned with the rise of anti-Semitism in the US and what I’m hearing about neo-Nazis in Europe.