Sydney Taylor Award-winning novel Berlin Boxing Club is loosely inspired by the true
story of boxer Max Schmeling's experiences following Kristallnacht. Karl Stern
has never thought of himself as a Jew. But the bullies at his school in
Nazi-era Berlin, don't care that Karl has never been in a synagogue or that his
family doesn't practice religion. Demoralized by attacks on a heritage he
doesn't accept as his own, Karl longs to prove his worth. So when Max Schmeling,
champion boxer and German national hero, makes a deal with Karl's father to
give Karl boxing lessons, A skilled cartoonist, Karl has never had an interest
in boxing, but now it seems like the perfect chance to reinvent himself. But
when Nazi violence against Jews escalates, Karl must take on a new role:
protector of his family. And as Max's fame forces him to associate with Hitler
and other Nazi elites, Karl begins to wonder where his hero's sympathies truly
lie. Can Karl balance his dream of boxing greatness with his obligation to keep
his family out of harm's way?
The Berlin Boxing Club is about a boy named Karl who is an ethnic Jew (not religious) in Germany during the Nazi rise to power. Through a family association, he gets taken under the wing of Max Schmeling (a real German heavyweight boxer at the time - if you read his Wikipedia entry, it's interesting to see how his real history lines up with the fictional story), who decides to train him as a boxer. The novel follows Karl's growth as a boxer and his family's increasing struggles to live freely in pre-WWII Germany.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first started this, I figured it was just to check it off the list since we had already found so many good choices, but this book really grew on me as I read. It is a well-told and compelling story (plenty of action and suspense), and it is a significant story, raising real questions about courage. Karl really grows over the course of the novel, and it is interesting to see the process by which he becomes a man. I would be curious to hear what students think of this book. Some of our struggling readers might get turned off at the beginning by the sprinkling of German names and words throughout, and it doesn't have the same "flash" as some of the other popular YA fiction; however, I know our students are interested in history (especially WWII), and the story is compelling and moves well. There are some rather disturbing scenes as some of Karl's classmates who are in the Hitler Youth bully him, physically and verbally (especially in the opening chapter), and there are several scenes that revolve around the visual evidence of Karl's circumcision as a sign that he is Jewish; however, these scenes are in line with real events that happened in our history and raise important questions. While not, perhaps, as captivating as something like Legend or Divergent, I think it's an important and well-told story that is worth considering (and would probably be a more worthwhile non-dystopia read than If I Stay or The Pregnancy Project).
I felt that this book started off on the slow side and have to admit that the german was hard to figure out at first. I did like the book once it started picking up in the second part on when he was being trained. To me even thought the story started slow it gave us the initial understanding of where Karl was coming from and as it progressed on how he has changed. I liked in he book on how he got the motivation to train and continued even after his coach never came for him, to me that showed motivation. I would think that this would be a good book for the summer reading because it has to do with history and to my understanding our students cant get enough of it ( WWII as Ms. Handley stated). I do worry that the scenes that are related to his early bullying would be too much for some students. I also feel that because the story starts up slow that students would be compelled to just stop and say that it is too dry for their tastes. I do feel that this book have the male students intrest by just the title of the book though.
ReplyDeleteI read this book last year as part of the selection for the 2013 Summer Reading. I really enjoyed this book once I got into it. I agree with Juan that it started a little slow, but it was a great mix of history and fiction along with the quirky side stories/drawing of Karl it kept the story interesting throughout. Some students who read it last year were disturbed by the racism and some of the content regarding hazing/abuse of Jews. But it really helped to show how difficult life was for Jews leading up to the extermination camps. Definitely a good selection for the WWII period and I have recommended it many times to students in the last year.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great book and I could see it as our summer read - in spite of the troubling subject matter. It's a little on the long side for some but, as other reviewers have said, this character (Karl) driven story, keeps the reader's interest throughout. It might be apropos that a story about WWII, a real epic tragedy, follows two summers of dystopian fantasy. ms
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