The Book Theif
Words are power
This book was written by Markus Zusak. It has 552 pages.
Summary
This book is about a German girl growing up in Nazi Germany, starting in 1939. By her younger brother's graveside, she commits her first book thievery. From there she moves to her new foster family's home on Himmel Street, a less wealthy section of the town of Munich. She lives with her strict mother Rosa, and her kind and jolly father, Hans. She also develops an unbreakable bond with the boy next door, Rudy Steiner, who is ambitious and athletic. She goes through many struggles with her education, coming from a very poor family and having no education before she moved. But eventually she can read and write just fine. Then she comes to realize that her foster father has some stories and relationships he may have forgotten to mention. She discovers this when a tired Jew knocks on her door, seeking shelter. When she hides him in her basement her world is changed forever. But when tragedy strikes, can all this have prepared her for what was ahead?
Point of veiw
The point of view in this book is a bit different. The narrator is actually death, and he is telling the story of the book thief and those around her. He is not mean, he actually hints that he dislikes his job in the book. He is actually "haunted by humans", because he has seen all of the terrible things that we have done. The picture above is something he said in the book that demonstrates these feelings.
Important and intresting scenes
The basement snowball fight scene
Max asks Liesel for his daily weather report, and instead of using words to describe it, she decides to bring some snow down instead, starting the snowball fight of a life-time
The book burning scene
To show their love for their fuerer, Germans burned books and other items to celebrate his birthday. This is where Liesel commits her second book thievery, and a much more serious one too.
bomb shelter basement scene
They are having bombing drills on Himmel street, and everyone is very un-nerved by it all. So Liesel Memminger calms everyone down by reading a segment of her book to everyone, and is asked to do it again next time.
Theme
The theme of this novel is how hard life was in the time and place of Nazi Germany. It is about all the struggles people went through, how much they lost, and how cruel people can be. I think that there are some things that you can take away from this novel and apply to your life. One thing is to always be kind to others no matter what race or religion they are. We are all human, and should all be treated equally. This book shows that by showing you the struggles of a Jew in these times. Even though the character is made up, the time and events are real, and you should remember that and make sure that it never happens again.This novel also just shows how terrile this time and these events were, and its good to have knowledge of this, to remember those who were lost, and prevent such acts in te future.