The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (Deluxe Illustrated Edition) by John Boyne

Author:John Boyne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2017-04-11T04:00:00+00:00

‘Hello,’ said Bruno.

‘Hello,’ said the boy.

The boy was smaller than Bruno and was sitting on the ground with a forlorn expression. He wore the same striped pajamas that all the other people on that side of the fence wore, and a striped cloth cap on his head. He wasn’t wearing any shoes or socks and his feet were rather dirty. On his arm he wore an armband with a star on it.

When Bruno first approached the boy, he was sitting cross-legged on the ground, staring at the dust beneath him. However, after a moment he looked up and Bruno saw his face. It was quite a strange face too. His skin was almost the colour of grey, but not quite like any grey that Bruno had ever seen before. He had very large eyes and they were the colour of caramel sweets; the whites were very white, and when the boy looked at him all Bruno could see was an enormous pair of sad eyes staring back.

Bruno was sure that he had never seen a skinnier or sadder boy in his life but decided that he had better talk to him.

‘I’ve been exploring,’ he said.

‘Have you?’ said the little boy.

‘Yes. For almost two hours now.’

This was not strictly speaking true. Bruno had been exploring for just over an hour but he didn’t think that exaggerating slightly would be too bad a thing to do. It wasn’t quite the same thing as lying and made him seem more adventurous than he really was.

‘Have you found anything?’ asked the boy.

‘Very little.’

‘Nothing at all?’

‘Well, I found you,’ said Bruno after a moment.

He stared at the boy and considered asking him why he looked so sad but hesitated because he thought it might sound rude. He knew that sometimes people who were sad didn’t want to be asked about it; sometimes they’d offer the information themselves and sometimes they wouldn’t stop talking about it for months on end, but on this occasion Bruno thought that he should wait before saying anything. He had discovered something during his exploration, and now that he was finally talking to one of the people on the other side of the fence it seemed like a good idea to make the most of the opportunity.

He sat down on the ground on his side of the fence and crossed his legs like the little boy and wished that he had brought some chocolate with him or perhaps a pastry that they could share.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.