The+Book+Thief

1. From whose perspective is the story told? (A Jew? A Nazi? A survivor? A Righteous Gentile? A Descendant of a survivor?) What are the benefits of getting the story from this perspective?

The Book Thief is told from the perspective of Death, personified. Death follows a little girl who is orphaned and taken in by a German family. The family, while German, does not subscribe to the ideology of the Nazis, but is pressured and ridiculed quite a bit because of that. The benefit of getting the story from Death's perspective is that the reader gets to see all of the action from all of the characters. It's a little confusing at first, but once the reader figures out that Death is who is talking, it is fun to get the story from his perspective.

2. What life lesson did you learn from the plot of this story?

From this story, one can learn the lesson of empathy. Many assume that all Germans were as cruel as the famous Nazis, but from this story, the reader sees that some Germans were simply put into situations where their livelihood depended on how they reacted to the Nazi ideals. Many Germans did whatever they could to help the Jewish people. For example, the predominant family in the story harbors a Jewish man and tries very hard to protect him even though they are putting their lives in danger by doing so.

3. What did you like most about this book?

The part I loved most about this book is that the girl that Death follows loves books so much that she steals them!! Her foster father teaches her to read with a Grave Digger's handbook that she steals at her little brother's funeral (where Death first sees her). Later in the book, she reads to a crowd in a bomb shelter during an air raid. During that scene, the power of words and reading is profound and as an avid reader and an English teacher, I love, love, love that the author made that power so clear in his novel!

4. How does this text relate, if at all, to //Parallel Journeys//?

This text relates to //Parallel Journeys// in that in both books, the reader gets to see the German perspective. Much of the available Holocaust literature is written about or from the Jewish survivors. Not to discredit a survivor's story, but reading literature from another perspective is sometimes helpful in getting the full idea in one's head.

5. How could you use this book to teach the Holocaust?

//The Book Thief// is chaulked full of incidents specific to that time in history. For example, one of the places that she steals a book from is a public book burning. Book burnings were prevalent during that time because the Nazis were trying to limit the knowledge the German people had thereby making them easier to control. I would use this book to show students some of the ways the Nazis tried to control the German people and to give them a story that shows some of the Germans tried to avoid following the Nazis.

6. Would you recommend this book to a friend?

Yes, of course!

Christy Mayfield