Hazel Rochman (Booklist, Jan. 1, 2006 (Vol. 102, No. 9))
Death is the narrator of this lengthy, powerful story of a town in Nazi Germany. He is a kindly, caring Death, overwhelmed by the souls he has to collect from people in the gas chambers, from soldiers on the battlefields, and from civilians killed in bombings. Death focuses on a young orphan, Liesl; her loving foster parents; the Jewish fugitive they are hiding; and a wild but gentle teen neighbor, Rudy, who defies the Hitler Youth and convinces Liesl to steal for fun. After Liesl learns to read, she steals books from everywhere. When she reads a book in the bomb shelter, even a Nazi woman is enthralled. Then the book thief writes her own story. There's too much commentary at the outset, and too much switching from past to present time, but as in Zusak's enthralling I Am the Messenger (2004), the astonishing characters, drawn without sentimentality, will grab readers. More than the overt message about the power of words, it's Liesl's confrontation with horrifying cruelty and her discovery of kindness in unexpected places that tell the heartbreaking truth. Category: Books for Older Readers--Fiction. 2006, Knopf, $16.95, $18.99. Gr. 10-12.

Susie Wilde (Children's Literature)
From the beginning I was struck with the book’s uniqueness. How can you not be struck when you open the cover to understand that the narrator is Death? Zusak imagines a vivid character who sees first colors and then humans, recording his thoughts about both in an extraordinary way. Death sees a sky, for example, that is “like soup, boiling and stirring. In some places, it was burned. There were black crumbs, and pepper, streaked across the redness.” Zusak visions a Death who is both detached and empathetic. It is Death who gently picks up a multitude of souls in Nazi Germany and carries them tenderly off. Add to this unusual narrator, the intriguing character of Liesel Meminger, the book thief. Death introduces her as a young child whose younger brother dies while en route to being deposited with their foster parents in Molching, a small town near Daschau. Rosa, Liesel’s harsh-speaking, tender-hearted “wardrobe-bodied” foster mother is complemented by her new Papa. Hans Hubermann has eyes made of kindness and silver. There are a host of fascinating minor characters including Max, a talented Jew who is hidden for a long time in the Hubermann’s basement and Rudy, the boy next door who longs for a kiss from Liesel and fancies himself a runner like Jesse Owen. While people starve on Liesel’s Himmel Street, Liesel hungers after books and begins to “steal” them from a knowing mayor’s wife. And there is one more fascinating component--the book’s structure. Death, as narrator, slips in and out of time to foretell deaths and deeds, interrupts his narrative to announce in bold, certain truths, tender conversations, or other notes. Death begins each section with a playbill of events to come and ends with a chilling last note that seems to explain the book’s last line, “I am haunted by humans.” 2006, Knopf, $16.95. Ages 13 up.

CCBC (Cooperative Children’s Book Center Choices, 2007)
Both intimate and sweeping, Markus Zusak’s unforgettable novel is set just before and during World War II, among everyday German people living in a Munich suburb. The focal point of his story is Liesel, a young girl being placed in foster care as the story opens. Her mother, unknown to Liesel, faces imprisonment—and probable death—for being a communist. Liesel’s foster mother, Rosa, has a brisk manner and foul mouth but it eventually becomes clear that it’s all just a mask, protection for her soft and tender heart. By contrast, Liesel’s foster father, Hans, has a goodness that is immediate and shining. He patiently teachers Liesel to read, and words—those written, those read, those spoken, and those left unsaid—become one of the defining forces in Liesel’s life. As the war escalates, Liesel becomes a collaborator in a family secret: they are harboring a Jewish man named Max in their basement. Liesel can tell no one about Max, not even her best friend, Rudy, the free-spirited boy next door who dreams of being Jesse Owens and has loved Liesel from the moment they met. But she does tell Max about Rudy and other things happening in her life, brightening his dark basement days and nights with stories; a gift that he ultimately returns. When Liesel starts stealing books from the library of the mayor’s wife, a woman immersed in grief over the loss of her son in the last war, her thievery is a bold, decisive act in a world where much is spinning out of control. Some people in Liesel’s neighborhood are Nazi sympathizers. Others, like Rudy’s parents, follow all the rules in the futile hope they won’t draw attention to themselves or their family. Yet many in their town willingly participate in book burning, and many come out to watch the ruthless forced march of Jewish prisoners on the road to Dachau, all but a handful seemingly unmoved by a scene that is, or should be, unbearable. How can human nature be explained? That question, and humanity itself, haunts the novel’s narrator: Death. His job is to gather the souls of the dead, and while he does not pass judgment he is far from unmoved by all he sees. In Liesel’s story, which embraces so many other lives, he—and we—find everything that human beings are capable of enduring, inflicting, bestowing, and achieving: from sorrow, sadness, and cruelty beyond comprehension to incredible compassion, kindness, and joy. It offers both despair and hope for humanity. A literary masterpiece that will engage older teens and adults, The Book Thief’s exquisite prose reveals extraordinary characters caught up in inexplicable times, and illuminates the worst and best of who we are. CCBC Category: Fiction for Young Adults. 2006, Alfred A. Knopf, 552 pages, $16.95 and $18.99. Age 15 and older.

Kirkus (Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2006 (Vol. 74, No. 2))
When Death tells a story, you pay attention. Liesel Meminger is a young girl growing up outside of Munich in Nazi Germany, and Death tells her story as "an attempt-a flying jump of an attempt-to prove to me that you, and your human existence, are worth it." When her foster father helps her learn to read and she discovers the power of words, Liesel begins stealing books from Nazi book burnings and the mayor's wife's library. As she becomes a better reader, she becomes a writer, writing a book about her life in such a miserable time. Liesel's experiences move Death to say, "I am haunted by humans." How could the human race be "so ugly and so glorious" at the same time? This big, expansive novel is a leisurely working out of fate, of seemingly chance encounters and events that ultimately touch, like dominoes as they collide. The writing is elegant, philosophical and moving. Even at its length, it's a work to read slowly and savor. Beautiful and important. 2006, Knopf, 512p, $16.95. Category: Fiction. Ages 12 up. Starred Review. © 2006 Kirkus Reviews/VNU eMedia, Inc. All rights reserved.

Claire Rosser (KLIATT Review, March 2006 (Vol. 40, No. 2))
This extraordinary book defies summary or categorization. Usually when we review YA fiction, we know the perimeters that define the genre. The Book Thief doesn’t fit within any of those perimeters, yet I’m quite sure there are YA readers who will consider it one of the most amazing books they have ever read. For starters, the narrator is a Being who is with humans at the moment of death, who carries their souls away. This narrator has a detached view of human nature, but he is captivated by a young girl, Liesel, who is trying to wend her way in the madness that is Nazi Germany. It’s a busy time for the narrator, of course, in the middle of a world war, with bombing, the concentration camps, and all the death and destruction. But he sees Liesel steal a book from the gravesite of her younger brother at the beginning of this story, and from then on, he watches her with interest. Why would she steal a book when she can’t even read? She continues to steal books, and eventually does learn to read, even reading aloud to keep her neighbors in the bomb shelter sane during bombing raids. There is irony throughout, with larger than life, frequently outrageous characters, from Liesel’s foster parents to her best friend Rudy, who wants to be like Jesse Owens. The way Liesel and her family and neighbors try to survive, to outwit the authorities, to help one another (Liesel and her parents hide a young Jew in the cellar for months, for instance), is the stuff of a good story. Zusak has made a name for himself with the highly successful I Am the Messenger, another work of literature that can’t be easily categorized. Category: Hardcover Fiction. KLIATT Codes: JSA*--Exceptional book, recommended for junior and senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2006, Random House, Knopf, 552p., $16.95. Ages 12 to adult.

Melissa Bergin (Library Media Connection, March 2006)
Death hates to admit it, but there are some human stories that distract him, haunt him, and the book thief's story is one of these. Nine-year-old Liesel arrives at the Himmel (Heaven) Street home of foster parents Hans and Rosa in Germany. It is 1939 and Liesel has already stolen her first book. The irony is Liesel cannot read. Haunted by nightmares, it is her gentle foster father, hardly literate himself, who interrupts his own sleep and teaches Liesel to read as she wakes each night. Liesel begins to settle in with the neighborhood, but war and the Fuehrer start to change things. Hans' political beliefs cause him to lose work and the economy causes Rosa to lose customers. Soon they are hiding a young Jewish man in their basement. While Liesel faces the completely ordinary challenges of growing up, extraordinary things are happening in her world that she must learn to deal with and act on based on her own beliefs. The narrative jumps and detours through linear time into foreshadowing and related tangents so that the entire story arc and how it fits together is not completely revealed until the end of the story in 1943. Part Holocaust tale, part coming-of-age story, and part the book thief's story, this title will have readers thinking and talking. Highly Recommended. 2006, Alfred A. Knopf (Random House), 512pp., $16.95 hc. Ages 14 up.

Deborah Stevenson, Editor (The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, May 2006 (Vol. 59, No. 9))
Last year saw the U.S. publication of the inventive and humane I Am the Messenger by this Australian author; now he’s turned his gifted pen to the daunting yet oft-treated subject of Germany during World War II, and the result is a book of heartbreaking grief and tenderness that earns every page of its substantial length. Its focus is Liesel Meminger (“one of those perpetual survivors--an expert at being left behind”), nine at the start of the story in 1939, and its narrator is death. Zusak’s powerful yet nimble writing ensures this conceit never becomes a gimmick, staying a penetrating yet poignant perspective; our narrator is never overly personified, but even he tires of the needless extra labors humanity gleefully throws his way, complaining about the Third Reich because “in all honesty . . . I was still getting over Stalin, in Russia.” He describes his liberation of often tortured souls in tones ranging from the matter-of-fact to the merciful, reserving his pity for the survivors, as in the case of Liesel. The narrator first spots Liesel when he takes her brother, as her family travels on a train to Munich where the children are to be put into foster care (their mother, a Communist, hopes to save her children from the fate she anticipates under Hitler); at her brother’s graveside she begins her career as a book thief, pocketing The Grave-Digger’s Handbook. Despite her losses, she grows to love her gentle foster father, Hans Hubermann, and to tolerate her hot-tempered foster mother, who addresses Liesel only in foul-mouthed imprecations (Saumensch, “swine,” being a favorite), and she also makes a firm friend in flashy but loyal classmate Rudy Steiner. The patient tutelage of Hans, himself a laboring reader, helps Liesel learn to read by helping her sort out the world of her book’s words, the book that is her only connection, save her nightmares, to her lost brother. She finds power in words, especially words in the books that she steals--from the bottom of a conflagration of unacceptable books the townspeople are burning, from the library of the mayor’s wife. Her family is committing a bigger crime--they are hiding a Jew, the son of the man who saved Hans’ life in the first World War. They secrete Max in the basement, where he becomes reliant on Liesel for his small glimpses of the outside world, and she in turn becomes reliant on him as something precious that has been saved where others have been lost. The book uses its length effectively; its duration is not oppressive, but it’s a significant and noticeable part of the reading experience, a stretch that operates to remind readers of the exhausting length of Liesel’s own experience in a Germany of danger, disorder, and death. The length also permits the intense drama to be enriched by strongly individual characters, such as athletic Rudy, famous in the neighborhood for having blacked himself up as Jesse Owens and run around the playing field imagining himself to be an Olympic medalist, and Rosa Hubermann, a “good woman for a crisis,” legendary for her scorn and profanity and utterly invested in her husband and foster daughter. Texture also comes from the complicated networks of human connection that shuffle the cards of chance, allowing some to escape death in one instance only to walk into his grasp elsewhere, but that also bring us together in strange and sometimes unappreciated ways. The result is a book that manages a poignant specific focus on major history but also moves beyond the specific, using the war as a lens to examine the destruction we wreak upon ourselves as a species and the significance of even seemingly small redemptions. It keeps its feet on the YA ground, realizing Liesel’s world accessibly, to make its sliver of recurrent, pounding tragedy in a world overburdened with tragedies all the more lacerating, to give human goodness a grace the more luminous for its homeliness, and to give the power of words even amid darkness a momentous, indelible tribute. It’s a book of greatness. (Reviewed from galleys) Review Code: R* -- Denotes books of special distinction. (c) Copyright 2006, The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. 2006, Knopf, 512p, $16.95 and $18.99. Grades 9 up.

Horn Book (The Horn Book Guide, Fall 2006)
Death itself narrates this deeply affecting tale of young book lover Liesel, her loving foster parents, and the Jew hiding in their basement. They struggle, with their small, poor community, to endure the double-edged dangers of Nazi Germany. Zusak's poignant tribute to words, survival, and their inevitable entwinement is a tour de force to be not just read but inhabited. Category: Older Fiction. 2006, Knopf, 552pp, 16.95, 18.99. Ages 12 to 14. Rating: 1: Outstanding, noteworthy in style, content, and/or illustration.

Amanda MacGregor (VOYA, June 2006 (Vol. 29, No. 2))
Liesel Meminger is nine years old and on her way to live with a foster family in Munich when her brother dies. As he is buried in snow-packed ground in the middle of nowhere, Liesel spots a small book that falls from the gravedigger's pocket. Thus begins her new life, her career as a book thief, and a love affair with words that will eventually save her life. Feeling numb and terrified, Liesel arrives at her new home clinging to the memory of her brother and to this small book. It is 1939 in Nazi Germany. Liesel's heartbreaking story unfolds through the narration of a surprisingly affable Death. Liesel spends her days reading with Papa, playing with her friend Rudy, and carrying with her the secret about the Jewish man in her basement. Death spends his days going about this job in a compassionate yet detached manner, collecting departed souls and marveling over humanity. His path intersects with Liesel's three times. She makes a profound impression on him, and he carries her words with him everywhere he goes. Zusak brilliantly weaves together many strands of stories, creating a gripping and tragic narrative. The outcome of much of the story is no secret, thanks to Death's propensity to get ahead of himself and inform readers what happens, but it is nonetheless upsetting and affecting. Death admits to being haunted by humans; Zusak's exquisite tale will haunt readers long after its pages are over. VOYA CODES: 5Q 4P J S (Hard to imagine it being any better written; Broad general YA appeal; Junior High, defined as grades 7 to 9; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12). 2006, Knopf, 552p., $16.95 and PLB $18.99. Ages 12 to 18.

Ann Parker (WOW Review: Reading Across Cultures, June 2009 (Vol. 1, No. 4))
The Book Thief has a lot in common with The Diary of Anne Frank. In each, a young girl is forever changed by the events of World War II; both books illustrate the terror of living under Nazi rule; and both could be considered adult books due to their difficult subject matter. Anne Frank is a Dutch Jew who goes into hiding in Amsterdam, while the heroine of The Book Thief, Liesel Meminger, is a German citizen living in Molching, a small town outside of Munich. While Liesel doesn’t experience the dread of being discovered by Nazis or the hopelessness of the concentration camps, she does experience the constant fear of being discovered by German authorities for hiding a Jewish friend, and she empathizes with the Jews who are marched through Molching on the way to the camps. The Book Thief documents the gloom that many German citizens felt about what was happening in their neighborhoods, and the despair they felt while living under Nazi rule. Neither book is optimistic that the world will return to rightness, but The Book Thief, like The Diary of Anne Frank, leaves the reader with the knowledge that the human spirit can survive horrible times.
    This touchingly funny and heartbreakingly sad novel contains many memorable characters: Hans, Liesel’s foster father; Rosa, her foster mother who curses to show her love; Rudy, Liesel’s best friend; and Max, the Jewish son of Hans’ friend from the first world war who Hans decides to hide in their basement. It also has an unlikely narrator: Death. This Death is not a triumphant presence eagerly awaiting the opportunity to snatch humans from this life; this Death is instead worn down from the work the war has created for him. He first meets Liesel when she is traveling with her mother and younger brother to Molching, where she and her brother will live with a foster family; her brother dies on the train before they arrive. Death witnesses Liesel stealing her first book – a book on grave digging techniques dropped by one of the men who bury her brother by the side of the tracks. This Death is not scary, offering tips on living, insights into the characters, foreshadowing of things to come, and even comes away changed from knowing Liesel.
    Liesel acquires several more books during the course of the story; some are gifts and some are stolen. Books provide an anchor for Liesel; the act of reading becomes a liberating event, even if the book isn’t one she would choose for herself. Hans helps her overcome her loneliness by reading with her late into the night. When she and Rudy have the opportunity to steal from the rich mayor’s wife, she chooses to steal not food, not shoes, but a book. While living in their basement, Max spends his time painting over the pages of a copy of Mein Kampf and rewriting the book to give Liesel hope for a better future. During air raids, Liesel reads books to the frightened neighbors cowering in the bomb shelter to calm them. At the end of the story, Liesel is saved from the bombing that destroys her neighborhood by the book she has decided to write to document her experiences.
    Markus Zusak was born in Australia to an Australian father and German mother. He grew up listening to his mother’s stories of her experiences as a child in a small German town, surviving the bombings and watching as Jews were marched to the concentration camps. He wrote The Book Thief to allow readers to witness another side of Germany during World War II, one where not all Germans belonged to the Nazi party and where some German citizens were willing to defy Hitler and risk their lives for their Jewish friends.
    While The Book Thief could provide an interesting contrast with the experiences of Anne Frank and her family, it could also be read along with two books that document the experiences of German citizens during the war. Both are by Susan Bartoletti: Hitler Youth: Growing up in Hitler’s Shadow (2005) and The Boy Who Dared (2008). The first is a historical account that documents the German youth movement and follows several young people as they get caught up in it; the second is a fictional account of one of those boys, Helmuth Hübener, a young German who joined Hitler’s Youth only to become disillusioned with the Nazi party. He was eventually executed for his support of the German resistance. These books allow readers to learn about the experiences of German citizens, not all of whom were willing members of Hitler’s regime. Knopf, 576 pp.