Book+Review---The+Book+Thief

=// The Book Thief // is the story of Liesel Meminger, a young German girl who is placed in foster care during the early years of World War II by a mother too ill to care for her any longer. On the train to Molching, Liesel’s brother dies and she discovers a copy of //The Gravedigger’s Handbook//, the first in a series of books she will find or steal. After this happens, “Death,” the personification who narrates the book, always thinks of Liesel as the book thief, and since he is curious about this lonely, bright child, he decides to tell her story. =

= = = Now on her own in Molching, Liesel must adapt to her new life with the Hubermanns, a couple with two grown children, one being a card-carrying Nazi soldier. Mrs. Hubermann takes in laundry and Mr. Hubermann, a gentle house-painter, takes the time to teach Liesel to read; so she slowly becomes a lover of words. Liesel makes fast friends with her unruly neighbor and classmate, Rudy Steiner, and the two of them join a local gang to steal food during the hungry years of war. Liesel, though, would rather steal books, and finds a treasure trove of volumes in the mayor’s unprotected library. Like many of their peers, the two friends join Hitler youth groups; however, Liesel comes to fully realize the inhumanity of Nazism after the Hubermanns hide a young Jewish refugee in the basement of their home. Liesel forms a strong bond with the refugee, Max Vandenburg, who eventually flees from their home and becomes a prisoner at Dachau concentration camp. Throughout the war years and beyond, Death continues to tell Liesel’s moving story, acknowledging the book thief as one of the good Germans, someone who steadfastly kept her humanity and courage during one of the most terrible periods in modern history. = = =