The Book Thief

Title: The Book Thief
Author: Markus Zusak
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Date of Publication: 2005
Illustrator: Trudy White
Genre Designation: Historical Fiction
Readability Lexile: 9-12 (ages 14-18)

Summary:
The Book Thief is set around the Holocaust and how it affected a young girl named Liesel.  Liesel was forced at a young age to live with a foster family in Germany, in hopes that she would be safe.  Liesel could not read or write but when she came across a grave keepers handbook she knew that she must keep it.  As Liesel began to learn to read and write while living with her foster parents the Hubermann’s her love for books continued to grow.  The way that Liesel went about getting her books was by stealing them, which proved to be problematic for her.  Liesel forms relationships with those around who are her age, those who are older, and even grew close in very different ways to her foster parents.  Liesel hated Hitler but she had to keep her hatred to herself because if anyone found out she and her family would be punished.  As the story went on we found Liesel affected by the war in numerous ways, both directly and indirectly.  Towards the end of the story there is a massive bombing and we find that only one of our characters that lived in Liesel’s neighborhood survived.  We also find out who our narrator was throughout the book.  Throughout the entire book we are being told the story, yet we have no idea who is talking to us as the reader.  At the end we finally find out who it is, and if the reader made a prediction we can find out if we were right!

Evaluation:
The Book Thief is a truly thought provoking story.  The book takes a little while to get going but once it does it grabs you and doesn’t let go until the very end.  The author does a nice job of blending the historical elements nicely with the story of Liesel.  It makes the book feel like it could have really happened, or maybe that there are even stories very similar to Liesel that we will never know about.  The author allowed the reader to see tremendous character growth from a variety of characters within the book.   I liked how the author didn’t limit character growth only to our main character but also to many of our supporting characters and even some that we had closer to the end of the story.  The language within the book seemed like it fit really well with the time that it was set in.  I like how the author included German phrases through the book, however I do feel like this did make for a tough read at times.  I also found that the book was hard to follow at times because there were so many voices speaking that I found myself lost as to who was speaking when, I can see how some student readers may also run into this problem at times.  I liked how the author used similes through the book, often times describing what the narrator was seeing as they watched what was happening to the characters.  In my opinion the author also used pun throughout the story, because there were those spots were the author wanted the reader to make the choice for ourselves as to what they were trying to get across.  We also saw the use of personification within the story by giving our narrator human traits. 

Illustrations:
The illustrations are few and far between in this book, but they leave a big impact on the reader.  The illustrations are drawn to look like pencil drawings, which make it seem like Liesel herself drew them.  It adds life to the book and makes it seem like an even more realistic, true story. 

Mini-Lesson:
The focus of this mini-lesson will be to process the section that we read by using a simile to explain how we compare to a character and their behavior that we read about today.  This will also indirectly help teach compassion and understanding by allowing students to see that even though we may not experience the exact same thing, that we may have an understanding of how somebody could have been feeling by own experiences.