Imagine leaving on a crowed train heading for your new foster family. Suddenly your brother starts coughing. He falls over and dies, in the middle of train car going to your new family.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is “ BRILLIANT and hugely ambitious…. It’s the kind of book that can be life changing,” the New York Times says about the novel.  Markus Zusak explains, “I wanted to write something different than what I’ve done before. The idea of a book stealer was in my head when I was writing I Am the Messenger, but it wasn’t ready to be written. The original idea was set in the present, in Sydney, Australia, which didn’t feel quite right. Then I thought about writing of the things my parents had seen while growing up in Nazi, Germany and Austria, and when I brought the ideas together, it seemed to work, especially when I thought about the importance of words in that time, and what there were able to make people believe and do.”

The Book Thief is about a young girl named Liesel Meminger’s life from the point that she steps off of the train heading into her new future. Liesel is the book thief, she steals books from anywhere possible. Her first stolen book was called the “The Grave Digger’s Handbook”.  In the middle of the night, the girl would wake up with nightmares about her dying brother. Her new foster father, who she was starting to open up with, would comfort her and they would read her first stolen book. The book ends with the war going on and the world goes wrong for this little girl. You will have to read the book to find out everything in between. This book is told in the point of view from Death, which doesn’t have a lot of roles in the novel, but shows up constantly thought the book.

I enjoyed reading this novel. This book never let up on the continuing events until the very end. Liesel always had an open mind and she always did what was right. She stood up for what she believed in and never let anybody tell her that what she was doing was done.

The author put the book in a perspective that was a little confusing, but it made sense in the end when the book finished up. The book was a time period that everybody that should know a lot about just because it is a huge part of history wherever you live. I recommend this book for high school students. The Book Thief is a New York Times best seller that according to USA Today, “Deserves a place on the same shelf with The Diary of a Young Girl By Anne Frank… Poised to become a classic.”