Prisoner B-3087
Survive. At any cost.
Yanek Gruener is a Jewish boy in 1930s Poland when the Nazis invade. Everything he has and everyone he loves is brutally taken from him. And then Yanek himself is taken prisoner, his arm tattooed with the number B-3087. Forced from one nightmarish concentration camp to another as World War II rages around him, Yanek encounters evil he could never have imagined–and yet finds surprising glimpses of hope amid the horror.
10 different concentration camps. 10 different encounters with death.
Can Yanek make it through the terror without losing his hope, his will, and, most of all, his identity?
Based on the astonishing true story of one extraordinary boy.
Scholastic Books | March 2013 | Ages 10 and Up
Praise
“A bone-chilling tale not to be ignored by the universe.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Heartbreaking, gripping, raw, and emotional…storytelling at its finest.”
—VOYA
“Through Gratz’s spare, persistent prose, the story of the boy’s early life unfolds with the urgency and directness necessary for survivor stories. A powerful story, well told.”
—School Library Journal
“Gratz ably conveys Yanek’s incredulity, fatalism, yearning, and determination in the face of the unimaginable.“
—Publishers Weekly
“A good starting point for students unfamiliar with the Holocaust. Pair it with Doreen Rappaport’s Beyond Courage (2012) and Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl.”
—Booklist
Awards
YALSA’s 2014 Best Fiction for Young Adults
2014 Bank Street Best Children’s Books of the Year
2014-2015 Pennsylvania Young Reader’s Choice Awards Winner
2014-2015 Nebraska Golden Sower Award Winner
2014-2015 New Hampshire Isinglass Teen Read Award Winner
2015-2016 South Carolina Junior Book Award Winner
2015-2016 Arizona Grand Canyon Reader Award Winner
2015-2016 Missouri Truman Readers Award Winner
2015-2016 Virginia Readers Choice Awards Winner
2015-2016 Tennessee Volunteer State Book Award Winner
2015-2016 Georgia Children’s Book Award Nominee
2015-2016 Eliot Rosewater Indiana High School Book Award nominee
2014-2015 Iowa Teen Award Nominee
2014-2015 Wisconsin Golden Archer Award Nominee
2017-2018 North Carolina Battle of the Books List
2014-2016 North Carolina Battle of the Books List
2014 SIBA Book Awards Long List
2014 IRA Young Adult Choices Reading List
2013 Cybils Middle Grade Fiction Finalist
2013-2014 Georgia Tome Society It List
Spring 2013 Parents’ Choice Awards – Recommended Seal
Cover Gallery
Bilingual English-Romanian Cover
Dutch Cover
Hungarian Cover
Portuguese Cover