Wiesel's Night Response

Night is one of those books that I know that I will keep and read often. I read this book while in my high school history class and then again in an English class. The book is filled with emotion and gives readers a sense of what it was like to live through such tragedy. Many people know about the holocaust, but not many know about how each individual person was so effected, by much more than just the death camps, which were terrible. I think that this book is great for high schoolers because of its short enough to not dominate a curriculum, its fast-paced reading for the students, and the book is interesting enough to get students wanting to read the book.

This book would be great to work into a history class as well as an English class or a cross-over class. I could see the content being a difficult subject to cover as far as the amount of death and sadness that overhangs the whole of the book. Although the book is sad, the subject of the holocaust is hard to cover and not be sad. It might even be a misrepresentation of the holocaust to not show some sadness when talking about the amount of death in Nazi Germany. For this reason, I might save the book for a senior English or history class for make sure my students are mature enough to handle the content of the book or the subject. That is an assessment that the teach can make about their class.

One of the things that this book helps students to understand was an individuals' perspective of how the Holocaust effected the people and I really think that this book should be taught in all high school classes to really show students just how awful these events in the book are. I think that I will use this book when we talk about memoirs because of its powerful message to students.