Zusak, M. (2006). The book thief. New York: Random House.

SUMMARY/PLOT

The Book Thief is narrated by Death, who tells us the story of Liesel Meminger. It's January 1939, and Liesel has joined Hans and Rosa Hubermann as a foster child after being relinquished by her poor, sickly mother and watching her younger brother die. As she views her brother’s burial, she steals her first book: a copy of the “Grave Digger’s Handbook” that she filches from the cemetery. However, she can’t read, and her foster father sees an opportunity to befriend Liesel as he teaches her to read and saves her from chronic nightmares.

Later Liesel steals her second book, “The Shoulder Shrug,” from a pile of burning books during a Hitler-inspired bonfire celebration. She swears hatred for Hitler when she figures out that besides burning beloved books, he also may be responsible for her mother’s death and her father’s disappearance. Hans warns her to keep her Hitler animosity to herself.

Max Vandenburg, the Jewish son of a fellow World War I soldier who Hans knew, becomes the fourth resident of the Hubermann household who must be kept hidden in the basement. Liesel and the Hubermanns befriend and care for him attentively even as Max is wracked by guilt and worry on behalf of his protectors.

Liesel claims other older friends, including the mayor’s wife Ilsa who has hired Rosa as her launderer. Ilsa indulges Liesel’s reading passion, and looks the other way when Liesel begins stealing books from her.

As the Hubermann household’s fear of harboring a Jew intensify, Max departs, and later Rosa shows Liesel the homemade book Max left for her, a defiant and hope-filled book written on painted-over pages of Adolph Hitler's book Mein Kampf. It's called The Word Shaker. Hans has also temporarily been conscripted to serve the Nazi war machine, and Rosa and Liesel fear for his return. With Hans and Max gone, Liesel does her best to go on. She reads to the residents of Himmel Street in the bomb shelter during air raids, thieves with her best friend Rudy, and helps Rosa. Just after Liesel's fourteenth birthday, Liesel and Rosa get word that Hans is coming home. He broke his leg in a bus accident, and his sergeant is transferring him. 

In August of 1943, Liesel sees Max again. He's marching through Molching to Dachau. She walks with him in the suffering procession. Liesel learns that he was captured some six months earlier, about five months after he left the house on Himmel Street. The Nazi guards don't take well to Liesel's courageous display, and Liesel and Max are both whipped. Rudy stops Liesel from following Max any further and possibly saves her life.



Soon after, Ilsa presents Liesel with a blank book, and Liesel begins writing the story of her life, called The Book Thief. She writes in the basement, and thus escapes death during a carpet-bombing of Molching in which every one of her loved ones are blown to smithereens. In despair over their deaths, Liesel drops her book, but it's picked up by Death. Soon Ilsa Hermann arrives and rescues her. Alex Steiner comes home, and Liesel spends nostalgic, bittersweet time with him. 
As the novel comes to a close, we learn that Liesel has died after living a long and happy life in Australia. We also learn that Max survived the concentration camp, and that he and Liesel reunited at the end of World War II. We surmise that they may have journeyed to Australia together.

CHARACTERS

Hans and Rosa Hubermann are winning characters among many. Hans’ selflessness cannot be overstated, and Rosa perhaps makes the most complete transformation from coarse to circumspect and munificent. This is one of the best books I’ve read in the last five years in terms of character development.

CONFLICT

The story contains tension between inner goodness and freedom and fascism, obedience and disobedience, girls and boys, hope and despair, and life and death.

GENRE

Historical Fiction

INTEREST LEVEL

Lexile 730

This book would be appropriate for accelerated readers in junior high and beyond.

LESSON PLAN

Socratic Questioning

The Junior Great Book Series (1992) has long been known for its Socratic and inquiry-based method of questioning. Shared inquiry notes important passages, and creates a framework for students to share questions and ideas about readings with classmates. Students learn from the author and from one another. Students learn to form factual, evaluative, and interpretive and questions. Fact questions ask fellow students to recall specific happenings from the reading. Evaluative questions allow the reader to answer questions concerning their beliefs in light of the story or reading, and how the reader feels about the author’s ideas. Interpretive questions are the heart of Junior Great Books. Students ponder the meaning of the reading, and no one answer is the “right” answer. An interpretive question may focus on a single event in the story, for example. Any answer that can be supported with passages from the text counts as a good answer.

Below, I will focus on evaluative and interpretive questions about The Book Thief.

1. “ ‘Liesel would not get out of the car.’

‘What’s wrong with this child?’

There was the gate next, which she clung to.

A gang of tears trudged from her eyes as she held on and refused to go inside. People started to gather on the street until Rosa Hubermann swore at them, after which they reversed back, whence they came” (p. 28).

What was Liesel feeling? How did this opening to the story make you feel?

2. “Looking back, Liesel could tell exactly what her papa was thinking when he scanned the first page of The Grave Digger’s Handbook…Not to mention the morbidity of the subject…As for the girl, there was a sudden desire to read it…On some level, she wanted to make sure her brother was buried right…hunger to read that book…” (p. 56)

What qualities of personality does this passage reveal about Hans? About Liesel? What about their personalities are complimentary?

3. “What shocked Liesel most was the change in her mama…She was a good woman in a crisis” (p. 211).

What made Rosa different when Max came? What does her transformation say about her?

4. “Occasionally he brought the copy of Mein Kampf and read it next to the flames, seething at the content…

‘Is it good?’

He looked up…Sweeping away anger…’It saved my life’ (p. 217).

What does Max’ answer tell you about him?

5. “Lastly, the Hubermanns…

Papa.

His soul sat up. It met me. Those kinds of souls always do—Those souls are always light because more of them have been put out…There was…an immense, magnetic pull toward the basement…” (p. 531-2).

What does Zusak mean, “…more of the have been put out”? How does Zusak’s eulogy for Hans compare to the other eulogies for the Steiners, Rudy, and Rosa?

Great Books Foundation. (1992). Junior great books, series seven. Chicago: Junior Great Books.