"The Book Thief" is an outstanding young adult novel set in Germany during 1939-1943 and follows the life of Liesel Meminger, a young foster girl, as she endures a poverty-ridden existence. Liesel has never known her father and is turned over to a foster family by her mother, along with her young brother. After the death of her brother, she resorts to stealing.
A lover of books, she not only steals them for herself, but she shares them with others while enduring the bombing air raids of World War II. One of the people who read Liesel's stolen books is a Jew who has taken refuge in her basement.
Liesel's brother dies on the train as they head to their new foster parents' home. It is there where Death, the narrator of the novel, initially rubs elbows with Liesel, who is nine years old. Death watches her steal the book lying by her brother's grave, a book entitled "The Gravedigger's Handbook." The novel presents two viewpoints. One is that of Liesel as she struggles in war-torn Germany, surrounded by maimed humanity, starvation and dying men, women and children. The other viewpoint is that of Death personified, who becomes a unique figure with whom listeners identify in a kind of way that never becomes morbid or depressing.
Award-winning author Markus Zusak is an Australian writer. As a young person, he heard stories about Nazi Germany and the Jews who lived in his mother's home town in Germany.
Inspired to tell the stories and let the world know that not every German boy and girl, man and woman followed the dictates of evil leaders, Zusak has shown another side of Nazi Germany.
Zusak has received many awards such as a 2006 Printz Honor for excellence in young adult literature and the Book Sense Book of the Year Award in Children's Literature, 2007.
He currently lives in Sydney, where he continues to write.
"Wow. This is a short book but it doesn't read fast. It is so worth the read though- stick with it. I don't want to say much about it except that it really moved me. The style takes some getting used to and my advice is to savor the book and to not read it too fast. You will appreciate it much more."
— Heidi (5 out of 5 stars)
“Brilliant and hugely ambitious…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“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“An extraordinary narrative.”
— School Library Journal (starred review)“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.”
— Horn Book (starred review)“Elegant, philosophical, and moving…Beautiful and important.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)" I tried three times to get through this book, but finally just gave up. I hated the story & disliked the narrator. The story just drags on & on and it is just so boring! The narrator sounds like the narrator in The Grinch cartoon. I just could never get used to his odd voice. It’s very rare for me to not finish a book, but this one Just wasn’t worth it for me! "
— Diane , 6/29/2018" My daughter had to read this book for school. She has dyslexia and can't read as fast as she needs to for school. So getting this book for her to listen to in conjunction with reading the book was wonderful. She enjoyed listening to this book. "
— Courtney, 5/13/2018" Love love loved it. "
— Kimberly, 1/9/2018" I really enjoyed this book. Written in a very unique way with Death as the narrator. I typically like books about survival, & this one hit the nail on the head. "
— Alison, 2/18/2014" Loved the perspective from which it was written. Keep this in mind when reading the book - it gives a different dimension to the story. "
— Jenny, 2/17/2014" Narrated by death...great experience ....different and fresh. "
— Monika, 1/23/2014Markus Zusak is the author of the extraordinary international bestseller The Book Thief and I Am the Messenger, an LA Times Book Award Finalist and Printz Award Honor book. He lives in Sydney, Australia, with his wife and children.
Allan Corduner, Earphones Award–winning narrator, is a voice, film, and theater actor who has worked in London’s West End and on Broadway. He starred as Sir Arthur Sullivan in Mike Leigh’s Topsy Turvy. Other films include Moonlight Mile, The Green Zone, and Yentl. He has also appeared in several BBC Radio 4 plays, including The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui and Insignificance. His narration includes The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and Garth Nix’s Keys to the Kingdom series.