Prisoner B-3087

Historical fiction

Description

Ten-year-old Yanek Gruener lives with his Jewish family in Kraków when the Nazi invasion transforms their city and forces them into an overcrowded ghetto. There he watches neighbors and loved ones disappear in deportations while hunger, fear, and arbitrary violence narrow the possibilities of daily life. As a teenager, Yanek is separated from home and driven through a succession of concentration camps, where starvation, torture, and relentless forced labor reduce survival to one dangerous day at a time. At Birkenau, the number B-3087 is tattooed on his arm, an attempt to replace his identity with an entry in a prison system. Based on Ruth and Jack Gruener’s wartime experiences, the novel follows Yanek’s struggle to remain observant, resourceful, and human amid systematic persecution.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Direct · Spare

Pace

Brisk

Tone

Bleak · Dark · Frightening · Tense

Structure

Linear

Focus

Character · Plot

Emotional intensity

5 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 2 / 5
Ideas: 2 / 5
Structure: 2 / 5
Background knowledge: 1 / 5

Themes

FamilyIdentityMortalityOppressionReligion and faithSurvival

About Alan Gratz

Alan Gratz writes young adult novels that place young people inside wars, displacement, terrorism, and other forms of political violence. His work is typically direct and strongly plotted, using adventure and thriller structures to make large historical events legible at the scale of individual choices. He often builds a story from contrasting perspectives or linked periods: Refugee follows three families escaping danger in Nazi Germany, 1990s Cuba, and Syria, while Ground Zero connects a boy trapped in the World Trade Center on September 11 with a girl growing up amid war in Afghanistan. Elsewhere, Prisoner B-3087, Projekt 1065, and Grenade approach the Second World War through sharply different forms of youthful exposure, from persecution and espionage to combat. Across these novels, Gratz returns to children pressed into adult crises, balancing urgent action with attention to fear, loyalty, family, and moral judgment. That combination of accessible pacing and carefully chosen viewpoints gives his historical fiction its characteristic reach.

Refugee Apple Books

Book details

Publisher: Scholastic Press
Language: English
ISBN: 9780545459013

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