Book Eight: The Book Thief

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, New York (2005)
Illustrator: Trudy White

Readability Lexile: 730L

This is a story about a young girl in Germany during WWII. This is a story told from the "Grim-reaper's"  point of view and it is about how a young girl named Liesel Meminger and how she finds a love for words. She is put in a foster family after her brother dies, and at his funeral she finds a book. This book sets off her love and desire to read. She goes to extreme and risky measures to get books, and even though she has such a strong love for words, she can't help but hate them at the same time.

This was a story I really enjoyed because it was a WWII book set in Germany, but it was about a little girl who was not Jewish. This is very unique and is not often seen. The story seems very real to me because this could have very well happened. It is interesting though that the author decided to use this "death" as the narrator because he made death a real person (sort of). One of my favorite parts of this story is watching Liesel grow up. She goes from a starving little girl who could not read, too a girl who writes her own book and lives for reading. She also seems to develop her own personal views on the war and Hitler. She really grows to despise him, and it isn't because someone told her to think that.I think one of the messages the author was trying to get across was the power of words. He used both ends of the extremes because on one hand you have Hitler who became to power through his speaking and persuasion, and then you got Liesel who develops a love to read and it really is what she was living for. It was evident to me that this was a very well written piece of historical-fiction because the author did a lot of research (shows the bibliography at the back). It adds a very nice historical aspect to the story. According to Scholastic.com this book is for 4th grade reading, and just based on the themes and language in the story I could not see myself using this book until late 5th grade or even 6th grade because of the social development in older students can understand this book much easier. Also, cognitively this is a tough book to read, and because of that I think it would be more suited for adolescent students.

There were some illustrations in the book, and I really thought the were important because they made the book feel real. They looked like they were drawn by Liesel or Max, and I think that added something to the story for me.

I would use this book over a very long unit, but if I was going to choose one thing to focus on for a mini lesson I would choose to teach about loss. I think this book is a good avenue to bring up touchy subjects like loss. We all have felt the effects of loss, and I think it is one of the hardest things to talk about, but also one of the mist important.

Thanks for reading!

Gorms