A while ago, I decided to reread one of my favorite childhood books, The Giver, and discuss it for Pine Reads Review. In the spirit of revisiting books, I was reminded of The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, and knew I had to do that novel next, mainly because I’d never actually finished it. I’d started to read it for class my junior year of high school, but because it was a required book, I didn’t give it the chance it deserved, and ultimately, never finished it. Now, I see how wrong this decision was; this beautifully written, poignant story captured my heart.
Death tells the story of Liesel Meminger—otherwise known as the Book Thief. In the midst of 1939 Nazi Germany, this girl’s thieving career begins with her brother’s death. On their way to their new foster parents, her brother dies on the train and is buried in a nameless town’s cemetery. By his grave, Liesel happens to spot a black book dropped in the snow—The Gravedigger’s Handbook—and takes it. This first act sparks her enduring love for words and books, and when Liesel settles into her new family, the Hubermann household, she starts learning how to read. Over time, she strikes again and again, and her personal library grows: one book from a Nazi book-burning, several from the mayor’s wife’s library, and any others she can find without getting caught. But when a Jewish man named Max Vandenburg shows up at their door asking for help, the son of the man who saved Hans Hubermann’s life, Liesel’s world is changed forever.
This postmodern story depicts the ugliness and beauty of human existence, our kindness and love matched by our capacity for cruelty and brutality, and it left me a crying mess at the end. Zusak creates an unforgettable cast of characters in this “stage play” of life under the Nazi regime. Whether it was Hans and Rosa Hubermann, Liesel’s loving and complex foster parents, Rudy Steiner, her lively best friend, Max, a brother figure for Liesel, or even the mayor’s wife, an unexpected confidante, I couldn’t help but love each of them, which made the tragedy even more heartbreaking. By the end, I was haunted by these characters, just as Death says that it, too, is haunted by humans. Speaking of Death as a narrator, I thought it was a unique, skillful authorial choice for the subject matter. The omniscient narrator lends a sincere, poetic, and offbeat lens by which to view Liesel’s story, and it works perfectly. We know what’ll happen to Liesel and her loved ones from the beginning, and yet, it’s the course of her life, the story, that matters, not necessarily the end. In war, people die, and Death doesn’t mince its words. The novel illustrates that words themselves have immense, undeniable power, whether they’re created for good or bad. They save Liesel and others, in more ways than one, but they’re also used to rule a nation, like with Hitler’s ideology in Mein Kampf. Most importantly, words can be a form of hope and resilience against authoritative forces, and it’s the autobiographical book Liesel writes, The Book Thief, that Death itself keeps as evidence that human existence has worth.
However, hateful antisemitism didn’t end with Nazi Germany. The FBI’s Crime Data Explorer shows that, in 2024, out of the 11,679 hate crime incidents in the U.S, 17% of these were due to antisemitism, making it the second highest bias type. According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, some forms of prejudice include Holocaust denial, far-right extremism, Islamist extremism, and outside of legitimate criticism of Israeli policies, antisemitism related to Israel or Zionism. Similarly, book censorship continues to grow. In 2025, PEN America recorded “6,870 instances of book bans across 23 states and 87 public school districts.” Evidently, it’s as important as ever to fight for books, free expression, and democracy; these are the things that can combat propaganda and absolute control. If we don’t continuously uphold these tenets, we face the danger of losing them.
What Liesel’s story shows us is that we must steal our words and stories back from the oppressive forces that aim to control and silence us. Moreover, The Book Thief acts as a reminder. In the past, there have been many horrors and joys, and yet these things aren’t restricted to history; they exist in the present day and will continue to exist for as long as humans live. Thus, we must remember history in its entirety and live our lives not as our worst, but as our most selfless. Part of this remembering means revisiting our stories about it, and that’s what makes this book so important. Even though this book’s genre is labelled as young adult, it’s undeniably a relevant book for readers of all ages. I’m glad that I gave this book another chance, and I hope you do too!
Danielle Hartshorn, Pine Reads Review Writer and Editor