Paperspine Blog

How The Book Thief wound up being categorized as young adult, I have NO idea. I’m just glad it did, because now I can review it here. It isn’t that I don’t think this book would be appropriate for teenagers, because it would be. However, I DO think that it would appeal to adults just as well. In fact, I have found adults recommending it time and time again. It’s the reason I decided to read this book. I wasn’t even aware that it was YA until AFTER I’d put it in my Paperspine queue.

The amount of awards and distinctions that this book has been given is almost ridiculous. It has been a New York Times bestseller, a USA Today Bestseller, winner of the Book Sense Book of the Year Award for Children’s Literature, a winner of the Michael L. Printz Honor Book Award, winner of the National Jewish Book Award, an American Library Association Notable Book, a Quill Award Nominee, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, a Kirkus Reviews Editor’s Choice, a Horn Book Fanfare, a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year, a Booklist Best Book of the Year, and a Bulletin Blue Ribbon Book. I don’t read books just because they’ve been given awards, but you have to agree: that’s an impressive list.

This book is about a young girl named Liesel and her life during the Holocaust. I have to admit that I have a certain attraction to stories like this. I blame my mother. The reason I blame my mother is that when we lived in Germany (my dad was in the US Army at the time), she tried to make sure I took in an education about what had happened there. We went to see some of the concentration camps and she was a little… overly detailed in her descriptions. We moved to Germany when I was two and a half and left and lived there for about five years. This tells you how young I was. I also had an overactive imagination: I would hear sounds in my ear when I was lying down (I had ear problems) that sounded like boots climbing on stairs and would immediately think that the Nazis were coming to get me. (No, I’m not Jewish, but my mother was sure to explain that it wasn’t only the Jews who were sent to the camps.) I tell you this only because it may color the way I view this story. But only slightly.

When we first meet Liesel, she is on a train with her mother and her brother, heading to the foster family that the two children are going to live with. The problem is that Liesel’s brother had died on the train going over there. When they reach the next town, they bury her brother. She takes a book that one of the grave diggers had dropped. Liesel doesn’t know how to read, but that doesn’t deter her. This is the first, but not the last, time she steals a book.

After reaching her foster family’s home, where she is instructed to call them Mama and Papa, she hides the book under her mattress. Every night she has nightmares about her brother. It is only after a bedwetting incident, where Papa changes the sheets on her mattress, that anybody else discovers the book. Papa sits by her bed every night and when she wakes up from her nightmare, he’s there to comfort her. He also teaches her to read during these times.

The second time Liesel steals a book is during a book-burning held by the Nazi party. Somebody sees her steal the book. That somebody ends up letting her reading in their library at home.

But something changes Liesel’s life in ways nobody can begin to imagine: her family takes in the son of Papa’s war buddy, Max. Max is a Jew. Of course, they must hide him – he spends most of his time in their cold basement. Liesel and Max become good friends, each helping the other cope with their inner demons.

One of the interesting things about this book is that it is narrated by Death. The little interludes and interjections by Death help move the story along. It isn’t always told in a linear fashion and sometimes, we’re told what will happen later. The story will then switch to something different and you almost, but not quite, forget what’s going to happen in the future.

I think this is a great book. It kept me wanting to find out what happens to Liesel, her friend Rudy, Max, and her foster family. I’d recommend The Book Thief for older teens (or somewhat mature younger ones) as well as adults.