The Book Thief

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

        It starts with a young girl named Liesel Meminger on a train to Himmel Street, Munich. She sits beside her mother, watching and witnessing her brother slowly die.The train come to a stop, half way from their destination, and the family is taken outside. In this unknown place, two grave diggers start to make a hole in the mountain of snow. As they dig, a black book slips out from one of their coats. As for Liesel, scared as she was, didn't know what to do. So her head views her surroundings, finding her first, out of fourteen, stolen books - The Grave Digger's Handbook.After the boy was buried, Liesel and her mother continue their journey.When the train stops, they arrive at 33 Himmel Street, home of the monsterous Rosa and the painter\accordian player, Hans Hubermann. There, Liesel is delivered to her foster parents. The book is clinched in her hands and hidden from the mysterious strangers. After a few rocky days, Hans found The Grave Digger's Handbook under Liesel's mattress. He wonders why she has it and asks her if she would like to read from such a book. She agrees. In the basement, they would sit there at 2:30 in the morning painting words she didn't know on the wall. She grew to love Hans Hubermann,he was the only person she truly loved. They grew closer and closer every night, sitting in that basement and falling asleep for the remaining hours. Over time, as Liesel grows older, she formed a special friendship with her neighbor and soon to be accomplice, Rudy Steiner. The next books she owned were given to her by her two foster parents. Two for her birthday - The Shoulder Shrug and Faust the Dog, and two for christmas - The Mud Men and The Lighthouse. She enjoyed every minute reading them with her papa. But to Liesel the most interesting part of her life was hiding a jew in her basement.

       Long ago, when Hans was in the war, his best friend Mr. Vandenburg, died, saving Hans's life. In return, Hans visited Mr. Vandenburg's wife and son, offering to do anything for them.... Now, a man stands in front of 33 Himmel Street and is welcomed in as a friend. Hans realives that a promise is a promise and agrees to take care of him and hide him (the jew) in his house. A couple of days pass, the stranger becomes a friend, and Liesel and the Hubermanns start to love Max Vandenburg, the son of Hans's best friend. Liesel and Max get very acquainted with each other and suddenly feel like they are family. Liesel feels so close to him that she tells him everything she has done in her life, starting from the day she stole her first book to what just happened five minutes ago. With all the information that Liesel and Max share with each other, he decides to make a book about his exprience with her. So he forms The Standover Man. A book that related and connected with Liesel and Max's life together.

        Since the war was coming closer to it's time, Rosa decided to make Liesel do the rounds of picking up the cleaning. She walked around the town every week picking up the clothes that needed to be washed. But the house she feared most was the mayor's house, where Ilsa Hermann would personally give Liesel her clothing. Liesel, the good reader she was, craved for more books and one day she got her wish. When she was at the mayor's house, his wife invited her in and showed her a room full of shelves, overflowing with different shapes and colors of books that Liesel could choose to read from. Every week, Liesel would enter the mayor's library and read a chapter from a selected book. The book she wanted most was The Whistler. But unfortunately, as the war drew near, there wasn't enough money for anyone to pay for washing. So after a few months, Ilsa Hermann told the young girl that it was her last time in the grand house. Since Ilsa felt sorry for Liesel, she offered the Whistler for Liesel to keep, but Liesel refused. A few days later, Liesel decides stealing it was better. And she successed with the help of her best friend, Rudy.

        After a few years, Liesel and Rudy hung out a lot. They stole fruit together, stole a book together and Liesel thought thats wat she needed to do. Steal another book. So Liesel and her accomplice, go up to Grand Strasse, and with the help of Rudy, Liesel climbs into the the mayor's library window. She searches for one that catches her eye, and it was a red book with black writing, The Dream Carrier. Whenever Liesel gets a new book, Hans always knows that Liesel steals them. But as the loving father he was, he would never mind of it. And after a while, she steals another book called A Song in the Dark. To Liesel, stealing books relaxes her. As the war came very close, the Nazis checked everyone's house to see if their basements would be a good air-raid shelter. When Liesel and the Hubermanns found this out, they paniced to decide where to hide Max, the jew. When the Nazi soldier went down the basement, Liesel, Rosa, and Hans, were so scared that he might find Max. It took forever for the Nazi to come back upstairs, and luckily he didn't find anything. When he left, the four of them decided that the best thing to do was to let Max leave. What just happened was to close for them to handle. So at the break of dawn, Max wandered down Himmel Street alone again. Since stealing books relaxed Liesel, she decided to go for it. She took Rudy along, who was looking forward to Liesel actually trying to steal food this time. When they got to the library window, Liesel found cookies, sitting on the table. As she handed Rudy the plate, she saw a book beside it, it looked interesting and so she took it. On thier way back home, Rudy found a letter in the book, it was from Ilsa Hermann. The letter suggested that when Liesel takes another book, that she uses the front door. And since the book was the Duden Dictionary and Thesaurus, Ilsa also suggested that Liesel use it when she has trouble reading.

        A few weeks after, Rosa decides that she should give something to Liesel. It was a book Max wrote for her. So Liesel was led to her foster mom's room and was given The Word Shaker. A while later, Liesel was upset that she as lost Max, and now her father was taken away to be in the war. This made her angry so she thought she could relax by stealing another book. This time she went alone and found a book called The Last Human Stranger. After finding the book, she sits on the floor reading pieces of the book, and then starts to rip it. Piece by piece, the pages and her tears fall to the ground. She immediately gets up, walks to the desk and writes Ilsa a letter, apologizing for the book she has broken and that she will never steal from her library again. But the next day, Ilsa shows up at 33 Himmel Street. Liesel answers the door and invites Ilsa in. The mayor's wife said that Liesel's letter was incredible and that Liesel should think of writing books.At the same time, she gave Liesel a little black book - the thirteenth book she owned. So that same night Liesel began the Book Thief.

        As she continued to write, Hans comes back to Munich and stays for the remaining time of his life. Liesel loved to write her stories of the hidden jew, the stolen books, and the neighbor she was in love with. But one night the sirens went off too late, planes already let bombs fall, and nobody knew. Hans, Rosa, Rudy and his family were fast asleep when they died. But for Liesel, she was saved because she was in the basement, writing about the day she had just had. A couple hours later, soldiers found her in the basement, alive. Liesel didn't know why strange men were so surprised to see her, but when she was led out of the house, she saw what had happened. She wonders who else survived, but discovered that she was the only one on Himmel Street. ......So it ends with an old and aged Liesel, living in Sydney, Australia. She dies only with her last book - The Book Thief.