The Book Thief

The story is told by death about a little German girl named Liesel Meminger, the book thief herself. When Death first meets Liesel she is nine years old on her way to a foster home with her mother and little brother. Her little brother died coughing in a train car just before Liesel woke up. Liesel steals her first book at her brother's funeral spotting it in the snow. The tile: "The Grave Digger's Handbook," Liesel reading ability: 0. Liesel reaches her new home, with a new life, with a new papa and mama on Himmel Street . She has nightmares of her brother’s death and becomes attached to her new father almost instantly. One day he finds the stolen book, and asks her if she knows how to read. When he finds out she doesn’t he teaches her even though he isn’t the beat reader or writer. The longer Liesel lives at her new home the more comfortable she is and soon she becomes friends with the boy next door named Rudy. The next book she ends up stealing is called “The Shoulder Shrug.” Liesel saves this book from be burned by Nazis a second time. This time she doesn’t get away clean though, and she knows it. The only thing is she’s never turned in. Liesel knows the mayor's wife saw her take the book, but she finds out later that the mayor's wife doesn't plan on turning her in. The mayor's wife invites Liesel into her house so she can read books in the library. Liesel doesn't steel anymore books, until later. During her time on Himmel Street a Jew named Max comes to live with Liesel and her family. Liesel grows close to Max, almost as close as she is with her papa. When the mayor's wife fires Liesel's mother, and offers Liesel the book she was currently reading Liesel refuses it and leaves angrily lashing out. A few days later Liesel goes with Rudy to steal "The Whistler" the offered book. Liesel steals two books and takes an offered one from the mayor and his wife. Along the way Max has to leave because Hans, Liesel's father helps an old Jewish man as he walks by starving. We see Max two times after he leaves one of these times he is paraded through Himmel Street where Liesel walks with hum. Later in the story Liesel decides to write her own book about her life, and the one night when she's in the basement writing the bombs hit. They kill her mama, papa, Rudy and his family, and everyone else on the street. She is dug out sometime after the bombs explode and above ground where she finds all the bodies of those she loves she drops her book. The third time death meets Liesel is in this very spot with a red sky. This very book is picked up and thrown away to be saved by death. Liesel is with Rudy's Dad, who came back from being drafted to find his whole family gone, when we see Max again. Death reveals at the end of the book that "the book thief died only yesterday" and that "there's a multitude of stories... that I allow to distract me as I work, just as the colors do...The Book Thief is one such story." (549).