The Book Thief

Title: The Book Thief
Author: Markus Zusak
Genre: Modern Fiction (set in WWII)
Pages (words): 576 (N/A)
Readability: N/A
Rating (out of 5 stars): *****
Reviewed by: Ben
Description: At 9 years old, Liesel's mother can no longer care for her, and she is sent to a foster home. The Book Thief tells about her coming of age in Nazi Germany: how she grows to love her foster parents, how she begins to understand prejudices, and how she learns about the power of words to do both good and evil.
Thoughts: For me, this book had it all. First, I thought the writing was fantastic. Zusak has Death narrate the story, which is an interesting and very effective way to convey the story. His descriptions are incredibly vivid and fresh, and several parts of the story were really quite funny, although the book itself isn't. Second, the plot was great. I love that the book is not about a Jew in Nazi Germany, or the allied forces in Nazi Germany. It is about a German girl in Nazi Germany. I have often wondered how so many Germans came to follow Hitler when Hitler was so obviously insane and amoral. I think The Book Thief sheds some light on that question, with the answer being that it didn't take many people to bully the rest into obedience. Anyway, the perspective of the book was interesting to me, and really helped me see a little better the difficulties of the German people under the Nazis. Finally, The Book Thief made me want to be a better person, which is what I'm really looking for in a lot of books. And I think that Zusak pulls that off without being preachy or even too idealistic. The characters are real and they make mistakes, but by the end you're really pulling for them because you can see what makes them good. Put all of that together, and you've got a 5-star book. Highly recommended.
Disclaimer: There is some blood and gore, but this book is pretty clean. There are a lot of German swear words, which didn't bother me because I don't speak German. A few of them get translated in to English, but I didn't think it was too bad.

P.S. A huge thanks to Christina for giving us this book!!