Estimated Reading Time 2 Minutes
Rating: 
Genre: Historical Fiction
Reading Level: Young Adults
(There is quite a bit of language and events in this book that are unsuitable for young children.)
First sentence: First the colors.
Favorite Quote From the Book: “I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race – that rarely do I even simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant…I AM HAUNTED BY HUMANS.”
Publisher: Harper Collins (1994), Paperback, 221 pages / ISBN 0064471101
Summary from Amazon:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7B8ioiZz7M]
Zusak has created a work that deserves the attention of sophisticated teen and adult readers. Death himself narrates the World War II-era story of Liesel Meminger from the time she is taken, at age nine, to live in Molching, Germany, with a foster family in a working-class neighborhood of tough kids, acid-tongued mothers, and loving fathers who earn their living by the work of their hands. The child arrives having just stolen her first book–although she has not yet learned how to read–and her foster father uses it, The Gravediggers Handbook, to lull her to sleep when shes roused by regular nightmares about her younger brothers death. Across the ensuing years of the late 1930s and into the 1940s, Liesel collects more stolen books as well as a peculiar set of friends: the boy Rudy, the Jewish refugee Max, the mayors reclusive wife (who has a whole library from which she allows Liesel to steal), and especially her foster parents. Zusak not only creates a mesmerizing and original story but also writes with poetic syntax, causing readers to deliberate over phrases and lines, even as the action impels them forward. Death is not a sentimental storyteller, but he does attend to an array of satisfying details, giving Liesels story all the nuances of chance, folly, and fulfilled expectation that it deserves. An extraordinary narrative.–Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA
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After Thoughts:
I have always loved reading stories from controversial themes like the Holocaust or American Slavery. This book is one such story that really makes an impact. I fell in love with the characters and I like the fanciful narrator, Death. This is the kind of book that truly makes you grateful for the multitude of blessing in your life, and promotes great sympathy for those people who had to go through so much. The story is heart wrenchingly good. There is a lot of questionable language in this book and some of the events are graphic due to the subject of the book. I would recommend it only to mature teens and above.
