General Information
===================
Title: The Book Thief
Author: Markus Zusak
Read By: Allan Corduner
Copyright: 2006
Audiobook Copyright: 2006
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
Publisher: Random House
Abridged: No
Original Media Information
==========================
Media: CD
Number: 11
Source: Library
Condition: New
File Information
================
Number of MP3s: 225
Total Duration: 13:54:45
Total MP3 Size: 383.32Mb
Ripped With: Audiograbber
Encoded With: LAME
Encoded At: CBR 64 kbit/s 44100 Hz Mono
ID3 Tags: Set, v1.1, v2.3
Book Description
================
Zusak has created a work that deserves the attention of sophisticated teen and adult readers. Death himself
narrates the World War II-era story of Liesel Meminger from the time she is taken, at age nine, to live in
Molching, Germany, with a foster family in a working-class neighborhood of tough kids, acid-tongued mothers, and
loving fathers who earn their living by the work of their hands. The [CENSORED] arrives having just stolen her first
book–although she has not yet learned how to read–and her foster father uses it, The Gravediggers Handbook, to
lull her to sleep when shes roused by regular nightmares about her younger brothers death. Across the ensuing
years of the late 1930s and into the 1940s, Liesel collects more stolen books as well as a peculiar set of friends:
the boy Rudy, the Jewish refugee Max, the mayors reclusive wife (who has a whole library from which she allows Liesel to
steal), and especially her foster parents. Zusak not only creates a mesmerizing and original story but also
writes with poetic syntax, causing readers to deliberate over phrases and lines, even as the action impels them
forward. Death is not a sentimental storyteller, but he does attend to an array of satisfying details, giving
Liesels story all the nuances of chance, folly, and fulfilled expectation that it deserves.
An extraordinary narrative.–Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA
From The Washington Post
Death, it turns out, is not proud.
The narrator of The Book Thief is many things -- sardonic, wry, darkly humorous, compassionate -- but not especially proud.
As author Marcus Zusak channels him, Death -- who doesn't carry a scythe but gets a kick out of the idea -- is as
afraid of humans as humans are of him.
Knopf is blitz-marketing this 550-page book set in Nazi Germany as a young-adult novel, though it was published
in the author's native Australia for grown-ups. (Zusak, 30, has written several books for kids, including the
award-winning I Am the Messenger.) The book's length, subject matter and approach might give early teen readers
pause, but those who can get beyond the rather confusing first pages will find an absorbing and searing narrative
.
Death meets the book thief, a 9-year-old girl named Liesel Meminger, when he comes to take her little brother,
and she becomes an enduring force in his life, despite his efforts to resist her. "I traveled the globe . . .
handing souls to the conveyor belt of eternity," Death writes. "I warned myself that I should keep a good
distance from the burial of Liesel Meminger's brother. I did not heed my advice." As Death lingers at the burial,
he watches the girl, who can't yet read, steal a gravedigger's instruction manual. Thus Liesel is touched first
by Death, then by words, as if she knows she'll need their comfort during the hardships ahead.
And there are plenty to come. Liesel's father has already been carted off for being a communist and soon her
mother disappears, too, leaving her in the care of foster parents: the accordion-playing, silver-eyed Hans
Hubermann and his wife, Rosa, who has a face like "creased-up cardboard." Liesel's new family lives on the
unfortunately named Himmel (Heaven) Street, in a small town on the outskirts of Munich populated by vivid
characters: from the blond-haired boy who relates to Jesse Owens to the mayor's wife who hides from despair in
her library. They are, for the most part, foul-spoken but good-hearted folks, some of whom have the strength to
stand up to the Nazis in small but telling ways.
Stolen books form the spine of the story. Though Liesel's foster father realizes the subject matter isn't ideal,
he uses "The Grave Digger's Handbook" to teach her to read. "If I die anytime soon, you make sure they bury me
right," he tells her, and she solemnly agrees. Reading opens new worlds to her; soon she is looking for other
material for distraction. She rescues a book from a pile being burned by the Nazis, then begins stealing more
books from the mayor's wife. After a Jewish fist-fighter hides behind a copy of Mein Kampf as he makes his way
to the relative safety of the Hubermanns' basement, he then literally whitewashes the pages to create his own
book for Liesel, which sustains her through her darkest times. Other books come in handy as diversions during
bombing raids or hedges against grief. And it is the book she is writing herself that, ultimately, will save
Liesel's life.
Death recounts all this mostly dispassionately -- you can tell he almost hates to be involved. His language is
spare but evocative, and he's fond of emphasizing points with bold type and centered pronouncements, just to
make sure you get them (how almost endearing that is, that Death feels a need to emphasize anything).
"A NICE THOUGHT," Death will suddenly announce, or "A KEY WORD." He's also full of deft descriptions: "Pimples
were gathered in peer groups on his face."
Death, like Liesel, has a way with words. And he recognizes them not only for the good they can do, but for the
evil as well. What would Hitler have been, after all, without words?
As this book reminds us, what would any of us be?
Review
“The Book Thief is unsettling and unsentimental, yet ultimately poetic.
Its grimness and tragedy run through the reader’s mind like a black-and-white
movie, bereft of the colors of life. Zusak may not have lived under
Nazi domination, but The Book Thief deserves a place on the same shelf
with The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel’s Night.
It seems poised to become a classic.” -USA Today
"Zusak doesn’t sugarcoat anything, but he makes his ostensibly gloomy
subject bearable the same way Kurt Vonnegut did in Slaughterhouse-Five:
with grim, darkly consoling humor.”
- Time Magazine
"Elegant, philosophical and moving...Beautiful and important."
- Kirkus Reviews, Starred
"An extraordinary narrative."
- School Library Journal, Starred
"Exquisitely written and memorably populated, Zusak's poignant tribute
to words, survival, and their curiously inevitable entwinement is a
tour
de force to be not just read but inhabited."
- The Horn Book Magazine, Starred
"One of the most highly anticipated young-adult books in years."
- The Wall Street Journal --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.-
