Noel's Reviews > The Book Thief

This book has been waiting patiently on my bookshelf since January! I signed up for the Reduce Mt. TBR and I promised to read 45 books already on my Mt. TBR as of Dec 31, 2008 (this one just missed my deadline). As soon as I completed the challenge, I picked up this gem of a book and read it slowly, savoring the characters and the amazing descriptions. As I read it, I realized the target audience was young adult, and I felt that this book was an excellent introduction to a younger audience, far more removed from that time than I, to the horrors experienced in one small town, but one young girl and her friends. The book's narrator is death, and he's a nice fellow, out to carry souls away from the perils of this inhumane earth.

The book kept things in proportion, didn't go into extensive explanations of the history behind the war - it just told the story of Liesel and her adopted family, the neighbors on her street, and the immediate people in her life.

Liesel, who arrives at the home of her new family quite illiterate, but with a stolen book in her hands, falls in love with the written word. Books and words help her cope with the chaos of her surrounding world. Quite powerful!