The Book Thief Essay

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, narrated by Death, is the tale of Liesel Meminger, a nine-year-old German girl who was abandoned by her mother in 1939, just before World War II, and sent to live with Hans and Rosa Hubermann in the little town of Molching. Liesel's younger brother Werner passes away on the journey to Molching, leaving her traumatized and plagued with nightmares about him for months. Hans is a kind man who comforts her and teaches her to read using a book Liesel stole from the cemetery where her brother was interred. Hans is sent to fight in WWII. He is sent back after his work bus crashes and he breaks his leg. Hans consents to shelter a Jew named Max Vandenberg in his basement as part of a promise he made to the person who saved his life. In the Hubermanns' basement, where she miraculously escapes an air raid that claims the lives of Hans, Rosa, Rudy, and everyone else on her block, Liesel chronicles her life. Both Liesel and Max make it through the war. She continues to live a long life and passes away at a mature age. The

I think a lot of the success of this book came from the historical accuracy that came with this fictional novel. I liked that Zusak included events that happened in world war two and incorporated them into the plot of his novel. For example the book states “The bombs came down, and soon, the clouds would bake and the cold raindrops would turn to ash. Hot snowflakes would shower on the ground (Zusak 498).” This section refers to in WWII when the Allied air forces dropped nearly two million tons of bombs on Germany. A key part of the book was when Himmel street was bombed, and Liesel was one of the only people who survived because she was writing her story in her notebook in the basement. Even though this is a very sad section, I enjoyed the way Zusak used the historical events to make the fiction characters seem like real people in WWII and their