Book Club Book Reading Response "The Book Thief"

          Lisel Meminger is the protagonist in, “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak. Lisel is a nine year old living in the time period of the Holocaust. Lisel’s parents are communists. Lisel’s father left the family and her mother is forced to give up her two children: Lisel and Werner. Lisel’s mother was on her way to deliver her kids to the foster family that would be taking care of Lisel and Werner. However, on the way there, Werner dies on the train, at age 6. Lisel and her mother get off the train and bury Werner in a nameless town. There, Lisel sees a book that fell out of the funeral director’s pocket. She picks it up and takes it with her. This is the first book she steals. Throughout the rest of the book, there are more books that are stolen, along with other things. Lisel learns many lessons throughout the book.

A lesson she learns is that she can’t denied her feelings. Rudy Steiner is her best friend and the guy she truly loves and loves her back. She however never does tell him that she likes him. He sort of hints that he does because there is always something he is usually asking for, a kiss from Lisel. She always refuses. She knows that she has feelings for him, though. At the end of the book, Himmel Street is bombed and Lisel is the only survivor. Her foster parents and Rudy die in the bombing too. She then looks for Rudy and finds him lying on the floor. She takes his head and kisses him. It’s like the bombing had to happen for her to finally kiss him. This got me very emotional because he was dying and she was kissing him. (She is 14 when the bombing occurs)

Another lesson she learned is that words are powerful and can express people’s feelings. At one point in the book, Lisel fell in love with words (books). She was fascinated by the books. That’s why she pushed herself to read and write. When Ilsa gave Lisel the news that she couldn’t afford Rosa’s (Lisel’s foster mother) service, Lisel got very mad that she yelled at Ilsa and told her some mean things. She also ripped up a book. Lisel left a note for Ilsa telling her that she was sorry for destroying the book and that she (Lisel) was punishing herself by not going back. At this point she hates words. Lisel however went back to steal some of Ilsa’s books. Before the bombing happened, Ilsa went to visit Lisel and gave her a paper pad and told her that she should write her own story. Lisel did, and in it she said that she learned that words are powerful. She learned that words express people’s feelings because Max (the guy that the Hubermanns hide) paints over Hitler’s autobiography and writes his own story. It expressed his feelings about the war.

Lisel is taken in by Ilsa, the mayor’s wife and the mayor after the bombing. She has gets marries and has 3 kids. However she doesn’t forget about her childhood. Later on in the book, when Death takes her away, he gives her back the book that she wrote. (Since it was “thrown away”) Lisel learns two valuable lessons, to not deny feelings and that words are powerful and express people’s feelings. These are themes that I learned from this book. People think that all life is about is having fun, well it’s not. Life is about learning lessons that are valuable and can be used in our everyday life. This however is only one meaning of life. Life has many meanings