From School Library Journal
Starred Review. Grade 9
Up–Zusak has created a work that deserves the attention of
sophisticated teen and adult readers. Death himself narrates the World
War II-era story of Liesel Meminger from the time she is taken, at age
nine, to live in Molching, Germany, with a foster family in a
working-class neighborhood of tough kids, acid-tongued mothers, and
loving fathers who earn their living by the work of their hands. The
child arrives having just stolen her first book–although she has not
yet learned how to read–and her foster father uses it,
The Gravediggers Handbook,
to lull her to sleep when shes roused by regular nightmares about her
younger brothers death. Across the ensuing years of the late 1930s and
into the 1940s, Liesel collects more stolen books as well as a peculiar
set of friends: the boy Rudy, the Jewish refugee Max, the mayors
reclusive wife (who has a whole library from which she allows Liesel to
steal), and especially her foster parents. Zusak not only creates a
mesmerizing and original story but also writes with poetic syntax,
causing readers to deliberate over phrases and lines, even as the
action impels them forward. Death is not a sentimental storyteller, but
he does attend to an array of satisfying details, giving Liesels story
all the nuances of chance, folly, and fulfilled expectation that it
deserves. An extraordinary narrative.
–Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From The Washington Post
Death, it turns out, is not proud.
The narrator of The Book Thief is many things -- sardonic, wry, darkly
humorous, compassionate -- but not especially proud. As author Marcus
Zusak channels him, Death -- who doesn't carry a scythe but gets a kick
out of the idea -- is as afraid of humans as humans are of him.
Knopf
is blitz-marketing this 550-page book set in Nazi Germany as a
young-adult novel, though it was published in the author's native
Australia for grown-ups. (Zusak, 30, has written several books for
kids, including the award-winning I Am the Messenger.) The book's
length, subject matter and approach might give early teen readers
pause, but those who can get beyond the rather confusing first pages
will find an absorbing and searing narrative.
Death meets the
book thief, a 9-year-old girl named Liesel Meminger, when he comes to
take her little brother, and she becomes an enduring force in his life,
despite his efforts to resist her. "I traveled the globe . . . handing
souls to the conveyor belt of eternity," Death writes. "I warned myself
that I should keep a good distance from the burial of Liesel Meminger's
brother. I did not heed my advice." As Death lingers at the burial, he
watches the girl, who can't yet read, steal a gravedigger's instruction
manual. Thus Liesel is touched first by Death, then by words, as if she
knows she'll need their comfort during the hardships ahead.
And
there are plenty to come. Liesel's father has already been carted off
for being a communist and soon her mother disappears, too, leaving her
in the care of foster parents: the accordion-playing, silver-eyed Hans
Hubermann and his wife, Rosa, who has a face like "creased-up
cardboard." Liesel's new family lives on the unfortunately named Himmel
(Heaven) Street, in a small town on the outskirts of Munich populated
by vivid characters: from the blond-haired boy who relates to Jesse
Owens to the mayor's wife who hides from despair in her library. They
are, for the most part, foul-spoken but good-hearted folks, some of
whom have the strength to stand up to the Nazis in small but telling
ways.
Stolen books form the spine of the story. Though Liesel's
foster father realizes the subject matter isn't ideal, he uses "The
Grave Digger's Handbook" to teach her to read. "If I die anytime soon,
you make sure they bury me right," he tells her, and she solemnly
agrees. Reading opens new worlds to her; soon she is looking for other
material for distraction. She rescues a book from a pile being burned
by the Nazis, then begins stealing more books from the mayor's wife.
After a Jewish fist-fighter hides behind a copy of Mein Kampf as he
makes his way to the relative safety of the Hubermanns' basement, he
then literally whitewashes the pages to create his own book for Liesel,
which sustains her through her darkest times. Other books come in handy
as diversions during bombing raids or hedges against grief. And it is
the book she is writing herself that, ultimately, will save Liesel's
life.
Death recounts all this mostly dispassionately -- you can
tell he almost hates to be involved. His language is spare but
evocative, and he's fond of emphasizing points with bold type and
centered pronouncements, just to make sure you get them (how almost
endearing that is, that Death feels a need to emphasize anything). "A
NICE THOUGHT," Death will suddenly announce, or "A KEY WORD." He's also
full of deft descriptions: "Pimples were gathered in peer groups on his
face."
Death, like Liesel, has a way with words. And he
recognizes them not only for the good they can do, but for the evil as
well. What would Hitler have been, after all, without words? As this
book reminds us, what would any of us be?
Reviewed by Elizabeth Chang
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
From Bookmarks Magazine
Zusak, author of
I Am the Messenger,took
a risk with his second book by making Death an omniscient narrator—and
it largely paid off. Originally published in Australia and marketed for
ages 12 and up,
The Book Thief will appeal both to sophisticated teens and adults with its engaging characters and heartbreaking story. The
Philadelphia Inquirer
compared the book's power to that of a graphic novel, with its "bold
blocks of action." If Zusak's postmodern insertions (Death's
commentary, for example) didn't please everyone, the only serious
criticism came from Janet Maslin, who faulted the book's "Vonnegut
whimsy" and Lemony Snicket-like manipulation. Yet even she admitted
that
The Book Thief "will be widely read and admired because it
tells a story in which books become treasures." And, as we all know,
"there's no arguing with a sentiment like that." -
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.
From Booklist
Gr. 10-12. Death is the narrator of this lengthy, powerful story of a
town in Nazi Germany. He is a kindly, caring Death, overwhelmed by the
souls he has to collect from people in the gas chambers, from soldiers
on the battlefields, and from civilians killed in bombings. Death
focuses on a young orphan, Liesl; her loving foster parents; the Jewish
fugitive they are hiding; and a wild but gentle teen neighbor, Rudy,
who defies the Hitler Youth and convinces Liesl to steal for fun. After
Liesl learns to read, she steals books from everywhere. When she reads
a book in the bomb shelter, even a Nazi woman is enthralled. Then the
book thief writes her own story. There's too much commentary at the
outset, and too much switching from past to present time, but as in
Zusak's enthralling
I Am the Messenger
(2004), the astonishing characters, drawn without sentimentality, will
grab readers. More than the overt message about the power of words,
it's Liesl's confrontation with horrifying cruelty and her discovery of
kindness in unexpected places that tell the heartbreaking truth.
Hazel RochmanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
Exquisitely written and memorably populated... A tour de force to be not just read but inhabited. --
The Horn Book, Starred, March/April 2006The writing is elegant, philosophical and moving... Beautiful and important. --
Kirkus, Starred, January 16, 2006This hefty volume is an achievement-a challenging book in both length and subject. --
Publishers Weekly, Starred, January 30, 2006
Review “Brilliant and hugely ambitious…Some
will argue that a book so difficult and sad may not be appropriate for
teenage readers…Adults will probably like it (this one did), but it’s a
great young-adult novel…It’s the kind of book that can be
life-changing, because without ever denying the essential amorality and
randomness of the natural order,
The Book Thief
offers us a believable hard-won hope…The hope we see in Liesel is
unassailable, the kind you can hang on to in the midst of poverty and
war and violence. Young readers need such alternatives to ideological
rigidity, and such explorations of how stories matter. And so, come to
think of it, do adults.”
-
New York Times, May 14, 2006
"The Book Thief is
unsettling and unsentimental, yet ultimately poetic. Its grimness and
tragedy run through the reader's mind like a black-and-white movie,
bereft of the colors of life. Zusak may not have lived under Nazi
domination, but
The Book Thief deserves a place on the same shelf with
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel's
Night. It seems poised to become a classic."
-
USA Today
"Zusak doesn’t sugarcoat anything, but he makes his ostensibly gloomy subject bearable the same way Kurt Vonnegut did in
Slaughterhouse-Five: with grim, darkly consoling humor.”
-
Time Magazine
"Elegant, philosophical and moving...Beautiful and important."
-
Kirkus Reviews, Starred
"This hefty volume is an achievement...a challenging book in both length
and subject..."
-
Publisher's Weekly, Starred
"One of the most highly anticipated young-adult books in years."
-
The Wall Street Journal
"Exquisitely
written and memorably populated, Zusak's poignant tribute to words,
survival, and their curiously inevitable entwinement is a tour de force
to be not just read but inhabited."
-
The Horn Book Magazine, Starred
"An extraordinary narrative."
-
School Library Journal, Starred
"
The Book Thief will be appreciated for Mr. Zusak's audacity, also on display in his earlier
I Am the Messenger.
It will be widely read and admired because it tells a story in which
books become treasures. And because there's no arguing with a sentiment
like that."
-
New York Times
Product Description It’s just a small story
really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist,
some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of
thievery. . . .
Set
during World War II in Germany, Markus Zusak’s groundbreaking new novel
is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of
Munich. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing
when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of
her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her
stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with
the Jewish man hidden in her basement before he is marched to Dachau.
This is an unforgettable story about the ability of books to feed the soul.
From the Hardcover edition.
About the Author
Markus Zusak is the author of
I Am the Messenger, winner of the Children's Book Council Book of the Year in Australia,
Fighting Ruben Wolfe, an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, and
Getting the Girl. The author lives in Sydney, Australia.
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