The Book Thief

As I finished The Book Thief, I found myself wiping tears off my already soaked cheeks. I found this book to be very powerfully and beautifully written. I was fascinated how Zusak showed the brutality and sadness of the time period in a way that was not obvious or crude. The way humans were portrayed many times as things (Hans is an accordion, the Jews were tablets) and many times the objects were given human qualities (the ribcage of the plane). I loved how often knees were spoken about in subtle ways. I also was struck by the character of death. Death was made out to be so human like, and at times he was so wise, and yet other times ironic and witty. I particularly found his line, “It kills me sometimes, how people die” to be very powerful (454). I feel that high school students could really excavate many strong details/connections from this text and have many brilliant conversations as well as endless paper topics. (This would also be great taught alongside Art Spiegelman’s Maus).

However, I tried to think about it as something I could use with my middle school children as well. I think this may be too much for a young middle schooler (though Liesel is actually of the middle school age), I may suggest it to children who really like reading and can handle the content of such a story as this. I think if this book was taught in a middle school, there would really need to be significant time spent on it for kids to really understand what was going on and they would need time to express and work through their emotions and confusion. Or, am I mistaken? What grade level should this book be taught?

I also think that it would be beneficial if this was taught alongside a history class (or even IN a history class) when the Holocaust is being discussed.