Let me just start by saying, I love this book. You know how people have a favorite book? Well, I never have, but now, I have The Book Thief and I am attached. Hooked for life, some may say.

Markus Zusak is a complete genius. The Book Thief when it first came out in 2006 was so extremely popular that it stood on the New York Times Best Seller List for approximately seven years. That is an incredible amount of time and it honestly deserved to be there for so long. This book is known worldwide and has been translated to thirty different languages. Let me give you a little back cover blurb about this book from Grade Saver.

Grade Saver said this to sum up the story, "Narrated by Death, The Book Thief is the story of Liesel Meminger, a nine-year-old German girl who given up by her mother to live with Hans and Rosa Hubermann in the small town of Molching in 1939, shortly before World War II. On their way to Molching, Liesel's younger brother Werner dies, and she is traumatized, experiencing nightmares about him for months. Hans is a gentle man who brings her comfort and helps her learn to read, starting with a book Liesel took from the cemetery where her brother was buried. Liesel befriends a neighborhood boy, Rudy Steiner, who falls in love with her. At a book burning, Liesel realizes that her father was persecuted for being a Communist, and that her mother was likely killed by the Nazis for the same crime. She is seen stealing a book from the burning by the mayor's wife Ilsa Hermann, who later invites Liesel to read in her library.

Keeping a promise he made to the man who saved his life, Hans agrees to hide a Jew named Max Vandenberg in his basement. Liesel and Max become close friends, and Max writes Liesel two stories about their friendship, both of which are reproduced in the novel. When Hans publicly gives bread to an old Jew being sent to a concentration camp, Max must leave, and Hans is drafted into the military at a time when air raids over major German cities were escalating in terms of frequency and fatality. Liesel next sees Max being marched towards the concentration camp at Dachau. Liesel loses hope and begins to disdain the written word, having learnt that Hitler's propaganda is to blame for the war and the Holocaust and the death of her biological family, but Ilsa encourages her to write. Liesel writes the story of her life in the Hubermanns' basement, where she miraculously survives an air raid that kills Hans, Rosa, Rudy, and everyone else on her block. Liesel survives the war, as does Max. She goes on to live a long life and dies at an old age."

Now imagine reading this book for yourself. All the little details and emotions you will get from reading such a powerful story. I cried many times because it is just simply so beautiful. I was touched because we all mostly have read and seen the movies from the point of the Jews. For example, Anne Frank, I had read her diary when I was in middle school and seen all the movies that take place during Nazi time. The Book Thief gives us a different perspective that we may have never really thought about. Which is, there may have been lots of Germans who were not associated with Hitler who lived life similarly to Liesel and her family.

I recommend this book for anyone who loves to read or even doesn't because this book has a piece of something for everyone. The bonds between people through out the novel really opens your heart. If you are not sure whether or not to read this book, watch the movie that was made in 2013. The movie is so good also, but the book is always better.