The Book Thief - by Marcus Zusak

The Book  Thief  adds a historical dimension to the coming of age novel. History can be a very dry subject, even the horrors of the holocaust can get lost in the sheer vastness of the numbers (even though those numbers are themselves a part of the horror.) It is important to learn the facts, but it is even more important to learn why they are important, and for this we need stories. The Book Thief is very effective in weaving in those facts into Liesel's story, with Death giving statistics about Dachau and Stalingrad (among others). While it's true that we have trauma and tragedy streamed into our lives, so much so that we can become numb to them, books like this one encourage us to slow down, consider one life, one family, one community.


Telling a story like this one is difficult to do well, but I think Zusak succeeds for a number of reasons. Making Liesel a thief who's not afraid to throw a punch as well as an outsider, an abandoned child makes her easy to root for. The rest of the characters are equally complex, and this complexity works well to prevent any obvious moralizing, which teen readers are especially wary of, and who especially do not want to be preached at. In my mind, the book that stands in stark contrast with The Book Thief is Boyne's The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, which is problematic on many levels, notwithstanding the obvious plot hole of a hole in the fence surrounding a concentration camp.

Problems this book might encounter
While this book would clearly be challenged by holocaust deniers, I can see no other issues with the inclusion of this book in YA/teen collection. The shear number of deaths, especially at the end as Death tells about collecting the souls of most of the characters, could be seen as too traumatic for a younger reader, but the majority of teen readers should be able to handle it. This is an important book to include in a YA collection because of its historical element. While some think that the holocaust is old news, one has only to look at the political situation in the US, and the hate crimes being committed to be reminded that we need to remember.

References

Zusak, M. (2005). The book thief. Knopf: New York.