In the spring of 1939, a nine-year old girl named Liesel Meminger comes to live with Rosa and Hans Hubermann in their tiny house in Himmel Street, in Molching, a small town near Munich. Having recently survived the death of her younger brother, and separation from her sickly mother, Liesel is angry, defensive, and driven by nightmares. But she recognizes a certain caring and acceptance in her combative and foul-mouthed foster mother, and falls in love with the gentle Hans, who sits up with her every night when the dreams of her brother’s death visit her.
With Hans, Liesel learns to read, starting with her first book, The Gravedigger’s Handbook, which she has taken from the gravedigger’s apprentice who dug her brother’s grave. Though Hans, a housepainter by trade, is not a very good reader himself, he recognizes Liesel’s determination to learn, and agrees to help. Together, they read each night, after Liesel awakens from the nightmares, slowly memorizing the letters of the alphabet, then making their stumbling way through the first chapters of the handbook.
At school, Liesel finds herself in the infant class, ridiculed by the other students for her apparent stupidity, since she has never attended school before. But she makes friends with Rudy Steiner, who also lives in Himmel Street, and they are soon inseparable, playing soccer in the road with the other children, delivering laundry to Rosa’s wealthy customers, stealing fruit and vegetables from outlying farms, avoiding the nasty Frau Diller, owner of the corner store, who idolizes the Fûhrer, and commiserating with each other about their experiences in Hitler’s youth movements.
At first, the war does not encroach too far into Molching and Himmel Street, but then the Hubermann’s son is set to the Russian Front, Rosa begins to lose her customers, and rationing becomes restrictive. Then one day a stranger approaches Hans, and reminds him of an old and dear friend, a Jewish friend, one who taught him how to play the accordion and saved his life during World War I. This old friend’s son, Max Vandenburg, twenty-two, needs a place to hide, and Hans agrees to have the young man come to them in Himmel Street.
So it is that Max moves into the cellar, where he lives in a small space under the stairs during the day, only creeping upstairs to sit by the fire after dark, when the curtains can be closed against curious eyes. Sworn by her papa, Hans, to secrecy, Liesel learns to live two lives, one in the street with Rudy and the other children of Himmel Street, and a second with Max, in the cellar and front room of the Hubermann house. The young girl grows to love Max, a slightly-built young man with a surprisingly pugnacious past, who participates in fist fights each night with the Fûhrer, and cuts out the pages of a copy of Mein Kampf, then paints them white so that he can use the pages to tell his own story, in a book he entitles The Word Shaker.
Narrated by Death, who provides a perspective on the Nazi years that is both poignant and searing, The Book Thief is the story of a handful of ordinary people caught up in madness who manage, despite the odds, to remains true to what is important. Written for young adults, it is a novel that will appeal to students and adults alike.
FernFolio Editor
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The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
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