The Book Thief written by Markus Zusak is an incredible story of life in Nazi Germany in 1939.
In a bold and unusual plot element the narrator of this novel is Death. We learn the story of Liesel, a young girl being brought to Munich with her younger brother to be left with a foster family. Her mother can no longer take care of her children and will be leaving them with a couple who will give them a better life. On the train the brother is so sick he will not live to reach Munich and is buried along the way.
The sister Liesel experiences her first brush with death and book thievery. Left on her own, she encounters the hard life of adjusting to school, chores and living with new parents. Her father, a painter, is a kind man who she becomes close to. Her mother is strict and a hard worker who washes the townspeople's clothes.
This is a story of love, growth, and the realities of thee Holocaust. Liesel's family hides a Jewish man in thier home. Liesel's father is against Nazism and refuses to join the party. He is sympathetic to the Jewish people and suffers because of that. Liesel becomes the book thief in an effort to learn to read and to hold onto something that Hitler and his army are destroying. This is a story of Nazi Germany from the point of view of a German family and their neighbors.
This is an emotional story that still resonates today, in a troubled time.
