Book: Night

Night

by Elie Viesel

Length: 120 pages 
Format: Paperback 
Price: Free - borrowed from a friend

How I heard about it: I subbed in 8th grade at the end of last year when they were concluding their Anne Frank unit. The sub plans required me to read a chapter of this book aloud to students. I was intrigued.

 

Basic Premise: This memior documents the experiences of Elie Wiesel as he was removed from his home to a Jewish ghetto, and then from the ghetto to several different labor camps before he was finally liberated at the end of the war.

My Take: 8 out of 10 (scale here)  
I don't mean to, but it seems to work out that I frequently read similar books in chunks. I just read The Auschwitz Escape and I followed it up with this book about life in concentration camps. This one was different because it was told in first person, which made it all the more gut-wrenching. It was beautifully written, full of imagery and poetry. It was exquisite.

When I subbed for this class, I have to tell you I was completely caught off guard. I rather pride myself in my ability to read aloud. I am smooth and expressive and I hardly ever mess up. However, as I read this chapter of text aloud to a class full of 8th graders, I was overcome with emotion. It was unreal, the things he was describing. It was so beyond evil, what was happening to this boy and his family. I stumbled through to the end and looked up at the class with tears in my eyes. One of the boys I had last year piped up and said, "It's okay. We know. This is hard stuff." What followed was a beautiful, authentic conversation with students, only a handful of whom I knew, about right, wrong, struggle, and humanity. It was an incredible 46 minutes. And it's these sorts of experiences that make teaching so rewarding.