The Zookerper’s Wife

The Zookerper’s Wife is a novel inspired of a real story, wrote by Diane Ackerman. The bokk was adapt in cinema by Niki Caro in 2017.

Diane Ackerman was born in 1948 in Ilinois in United States. She is a poet, an essayist and a novelist. She worked for many Univerties like Columbia or Pittsburgh. She is a member of American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She had a Guggenheim bourse. She is married with the novelist Paul West. She lives in Athaca in the States of New York. In 2012 she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for One Hundred Names For Love. The Zookerper’s Wife received an Orion book Award in 2008. Ackerman had three bestsellers: The Human Age (2014), The Zookerper’s Wife (2008), A Natural History Of The Sens (1999). She is a member of The NEw York Institute for the Humanities.

During the Nazis occupation in Poland, the director of the Warsaw zoo, Jan Zabinsky and his wife Antonina hid almost 300 people, mainly Jews evaxuated from the guetto. They hid them in the basement of their villa and of the zoo. Germans ner found out. Six million Europeans Jews died during the genocide organized by the Nazis. All the people hid by the Zabinsky exept two survived. The Shoah Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem honoured this couple with the tittle of Rigtousness among Nation, attributed to those who had rescuded Jews during the Second World War. Niki Caro said that she « didn’t want to make a film about the Holocaust but it was different. Most of our war films deal with men. But it’s talking women, children and animals and I’m very interested in that ». While Jan was often absent because he was engaged in the Polish Resistance, it was Antonina who tooks care of their guest with the animal compagny including a piglet, an otter and a badger. Nazi Germans were always deployed in the zoo. Helping jews enven offering water was punished by the death in this time. Antonina played an air of piano to warned her guests when the Nazis approached so that they could escaped by underground tunnels.            The Zookerper’s Wife is an astonishing book. In first his form looks like a docu-fiction. The book mixed fictionnal passage with descriptive narrations. It’s based on Antonina’ diary and Jan’s interviews.

I really liked this book that tells us the story of Jan and Antonina Zabinsky: two ordinary people who became real heros during the Holocaust. They showed their curage and their strong-willed in saving more than 300 Jews of the death while they trying to live. We can see the destruction of the zoo and the power of Germans Nazis. Zabinsky uses the structure of the zoo to hide people. This books makes us see History differently. It’s a book that must to be read.

The Maze Runner is a trilogy of science fiction novels  written by James Dashner. The first volume in French, was published in 2012 in New York by Pocket Jeunesse. The tittles are: The Labyrinth, The Scorched Earthand, The Deadly Remedy. 

The trilogy has sold ten million copies worldwide. The success of the books led to a series of film adaptations in which The Labyrinthe is the first one released in 2014, then it was The scorched earth in 2015 and finally, The Deadly Remedy was released in France on February 7th , 2018, all of them directed by Wes Ball.

      Thomas (a teenager) wakes up inside a cage which is moving up, he’s amnesiac. When the cage stops, Thomas finds himself in a large space, called “The Block”. ( The place is called like that by their inhabitants who by the way are also amnesiac as Thomas). The block is closed by four huge walls and a door that closes at night. Thirty boys live in the block and have set as rules: not to laze, not to attack each other and not to go into the labyrinth. Their life revolves around the practice of agriculture and breeding. They do not know why they are in the block, and who sent them there, but they  boys called these people the Creators. They know, however, that the Creators belong to a mysterious organization called WICKED. Thomas quickly learns that each month, the cage goes back up with a new members and once a week with crates that provide the block with material that the locals are unable to produce by themselves, and that the yard is at the heart of a a labyrinth whose configuration changes every night, and which is also traversed every night by monsters, called Scavengers, monstrous creatures that are also robots. Anyone has managed to spend the night in the labyrinth, and if somebody does, he always finished killed by a scavenger. Scribers can also sting, making the victim enraged. This one undergoes the Transformation, very painful, but which makes scraps of memories. A person stung and crazy by the Transformation is sent into the labyrinth when closing the doors, which condemns them to death. Thomas meets Alby (the leader of the Bloc). The day after Thomas arrived, however, the Box goes back a new one. This is the first time in 2 years that two new ones arrive in two days. But it wasn’t a boy but a girl: Teresa. She looks dead but, suddenly, she stands up and says « Everything will change soon ». In her hand, there is a message « This is the last, there will be no others. » She appears to be in sort of a coma and she is transferred to the infirmary. 

       It’s one of the science fiction movies I love. There are suspense, twists, etc. I like the story and the progress of it. The movies are just awesome and I preferred to watch the movies than read the stories. 

If I stay is a novel written by Gayle Forman, an american author. This novel was written in 2009.

The main character is Mia, she is 17 years old. She is violoncelliste and one day, she has an accident with her family. But in this accident, her family (her brother, and her parents) dead. Mia is the unique survival. But she cannot walk. She had a boyfriend, she loves him, but she wants to find her family in the sky. She doesn’t know if she stays with her boyfriend, Adam, or she wants to die… but at the end, she prefer to stay with Adam, and to continue the violoncelle.

This novel is very sad, but she is too interisting because we can see that this accident can arrived for everybody. The book help us to see that we must love and to be with our family. I like this book and I think that it is a good story !

Call me back is a novel wrotten by Sophie McKenzie, an English author. This novel is about a murder. Laura is the main character. Her sister was killed but she doesn’t know the murderer. She wants know him and decides to make an enquete. She is help by her friends and her husband. But at the end, Laura see that the murderer is Leo, her friend who help her to find the murderer. Leo wants to kill Laura and her family but she arrived to go in commicarian. Leo was arrested by police and story finished hier.

This novel is interristing and we want always read the suit. This novel learn us to beware of other. It’s a good story.