History Literature / TheBookThief

They aren't the only people Liesel will eventually form bonds with: there's Rudy Steiner, an energetic troublemaker with a habit for stealing; Max Vandenburg, a Jewish fist fighter; and Ilsa Hermann, the mayor's melancholic wife who lets Liesel use her library. Ilsa even lets Liesel steal from her home after the young girl catches Rudy's habit of thievery. However, instead of nabbing food for an ever empty belly, Liesel steals to feed a different kind of hunger: words.

A war torn Germany will teach Liesel the power of words; that they can be tools of destruction and cruelty as much as creation and kindness. As Liesel learns and grows, Death will be a passive observer to Liesel's life and that of the humans he is obligated to take to the afterlife.

* AdaptationDistillation: The movie cuts out some lesser elements from the book, and the main plotlines featured in the film were simplified. It also cut a few of the minor characters out; Franz Deutscher had a much larger role in the film since he became a composite of several minor characters.

* BatmanInMyBasement: Liesel and the Hubermann's hide Max in their basement thanks to a promise Hans made to Max's father. The basement is littered with painting supplies, such as drop clothes, so it provides some needed hiding material for Max. There are still a couple of close calls, such as when a Nazi inspects the basement to check if its a viable bomb shelter. Liesel and the Hubermann's each hold their collective breaths while trying to remain nonchalant. Mercifully, the basement is declaired unfit and the Nazi doesn't find Max.

* BerserkButton: Do ''not'' call Liesel stupid. One of her classmates learned this the hard way when he called her stupid for being unable to read. After being the butt of such jokes and name calling for days, Lieself finally snaps and start beating him up without restraint.
* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Himmel Street is bombed, with everybody who lived there dying except Liesel, through a stroke of good luck. (She was in the basement working on her writing when the bomb dropped.) Max survives his experiences in the concentration camps, and manages to reunite with Liesel. Liesel herself lives a long and fulfilling life; she marries, has children, and dies happily in her Manhattan apartment. When Death meets her to pick up her soul, he also reunites her with her childhood memoir.]]
* {{Blackface}}: Rudy pretends to be the black Olympic runner Jesse Owens by painting himself black with a mixture of water and charcoal then run an imaginary race. He doesn't realize that trying to emulate a black man could land him in serious trouble with the Nazis, something that his father quickly sets him straight on.
* BookBurning: The Nazis hold a book burning in Molching of any printed material deemed "objectionable". Liesel resuces a novel called ''The Shoulder Shrug'' which includes a Jewish protagonist.

* ChubbyMamaSkinnyPapa: Liesel's foster parents have opposite body types: Hans is a skinny man while Rosa is stocky woman.

** The incidents leads many of her classmates to bully her for her illiteracy. One in particular, Ludwig, repeatedly calls her stupid. Liesel eventually snaps and ruthlessly beats up Ludwig and one other for seemingly siding with him. A teacher intervenes and gives Liesel a far worse swatting than before. There was no amusement this time from the class.

* CrankyNeighbor: The antagonistic Frau Holtzapfel makes it a point to spit on the Hubermann's door because she has a long standing feud with Rosa for reasons unspecified. Holtzapfel gets friendlier after Liesel starts to make regular visits to her house to read to her.

* DemotedToExtra: Death is the narrator in the book and even physically interacts with the cast on a couple occasions. In the film, he's given a few voiceovers and that's about it.

* DiesWideOpen: Liesel's little brother, Werner, dies with eyes open.

* DontFearTheReaper: Death's is compassionate towards humans, particularly the other main characters. He describes hismelf as cradling the souls of particularly vulnerable or sad people in his arms.

%%* ForegoneConclusion: About half way through the book, Death bluntly states that [[spoiler:Rudy dies]] because he is bad at mystery. The ending itself is a ForegoneConclusion as well, as Death warns in the early pages that [[SnicketWarningLabel Liesel's story doesn't have a happy ending.]]
* GratuitousGerman: German words and phrases are sprinkled throughout the mainly English novel. It's mostly to remind the reader that the story is set in Germany and so the character's aren't really speaking in English.

* GroinAttack: Liesel kicks Ludwig in the crotch during the beat down she gives him. Rudy half jokingly asks Liesel to "don't kick me in the eggs."

* HeldGaze: In the movie, Rudy and Liesel hold each others gazes at different points in order to create some ShipTease.
* HeroAntagonist: The British are unqestionably on the side of good guys, since they're fighting [[ThoseWackyNazis the Nazis]] and all, but they're still ultimately responsible for [[spoiler:bombing Himmel Street into oblivion and killing everyone except Liesel (who got ''incredibly'' lucky)]].
%%* HeroicBSOD: [[spoiler: Liesel goes into one after Himmel Street is bombed.]] [[spoiler: And before, Liesel has a minor breakdown after she sees Max being sent to the concentration camp in Dachau.]] Hans does as well [[spoiler: when he gives a Jewish man in the "parade" bread, after he is whipped]].

* InsultOfEndearment: Rosa insults her husband and adoptive daughter nigh constantly, but there are times where her insults are clearly not meant to be insulting. It's a habit Liesel picks up and uses with Rudy.

** Franz Deutcher, Rudy's Hitler Youth leader who forces Rudy to run himself ragged then fall into a pile of horse manure.

* SnowMeansDeath: Liesel's little brother dies on the way to Himmel Street and is given a hasty burial in the snow.

*** So are Michael and Robert Holtzapfel. [[spoiler: Robert dies, Michael returns home but hangs himself soon after.]]
* TakeThat: Death makes sure to step on the picture of Hitler Frau Diller keeps framed when [[spoiler: he's collecting everybody's souls]].
* TrueCompanions: Arthur Berg's apple stealing team. When he moves away, the new leader doesn't keep the group quite as close-knit.

* ProductPlacement: Near the end of the movie, an UsefulNotes/AppleMacintosh computer can be seen in Liesel's home.

%%* HeroicBSOD: [[spoiler: Liesel goes into one after Himmel Street is bombed.]] [[spoiler: And before, Liesel has a minor breakdown after she sees Max being sent to the concentration camp in Dachau.]] Hans does as well [[spoiler: when he gives a Jewish man in the "parade" bread, after he is [[WhipItGood whipped]]]].

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Himmel Street is bombed with everybody who lived their dying except Liesel through a stroke of good luck. (She was in the basement working on her writing when the bomb dropped.) Max survives his experiences in the concentration camps, and manages to reunite with Liesel. Liesel herself lives a long and fulfilling life; she marries, has children, and dies happily in her Manhattan apartment. When Death meets her to pick up her soul, he also reunites her with her childhood memoir.]]

* BookBurning: The Nazi's hold a book burning in Molching of any printed material deemed "objectionable". Liesel resuces a novel called ''The Shoulder Shrug'' which includes a Jewish protagonist.

* GroinAttack: Liesel kicks Ludwig in the crotch during the beat down she gives him. Rudy half jokingly asks Liesel to "don’t kick me in the eggs."

* HeroAntagonist: The British are unqestionably on the side of good guys, since they're fighting [[ThoseWackyNazis the Nazis]] and all, but they're still ultimately responsible for t[[spoiler:bombing Himmel Street into oblivion and killing everyone except Liesel (who got ''incredibly'' lucky)]].

%%* TheGrimReaper: Subverted. At one point, Death even [[LampShade lampshades]] this trope by telling us how amusing the whole 'grim reaper with scythe and cloak' thing is.%%stopped here
* GroinAttack: Liesel gives one to Ludwig Schmeikl. Also Rudy's thought: "Just don’t kick me in the eggs."

* HeIsNotMyBoyfriend: Hans prompts Liesel to say this about Rudy.
* HeldGaze: In the movie adaption, this happens between Liesel and Max and Rudy and Liesel to create some ShipTease.
* HeroAntagonist: The British. Unquestionably the good guys, since they're fighting [[ThoseWackyNazis the Nazis]] and all, but they're still ultimately responsible for [[spoiler:bombing Himmel Street into oblivion and killing everyone except Liesel]].
* HeroicBSOD: [[spoiler: Liesel goes into one after Himmel Street is bombed.]]
** [[spoiler: And before, Liesel has a minor breakdown after she sees Max being sent to the concentration camp in Dachau.]]
** Hans does as well [[spoiler: when he gives a Jewish man in the "parade" bread, after he is [[WhipItGood whipped]]]].
* HonorAmongThieves: Arthur Berg and his apple-stealing troupe.
-->'''Arthur''' (after [[spoiler: Rudy and Liesel have stolen from Otto Sturm]]): We'll get the others. We might be criminals, but we're not totally immoral.
* IncurableCoughOfDeath: Sort of. It's not explained why Werner died (it's hinted he was ill) but right before he did so he was overcome by a violent coughing fit.
* InsultOfEndearment: Absolutely everywhere.
* {{Irony}}: The basement of Liesel's house was rejected as an air raid shelter due to its low ceiling but it was sufficient to [[spoiler:shelter Liesel from the bombs that fell on Himmel Street, killing everybody ''but'' her]].
* IShouldWriteABookAboutThis: Liesel ends up writing a memoir about her experiences. [[spoiler: Then, Death picks it up, which is how we get the story. When he meets Liesel at the end of her life, he gives the memoir back to her.]]
* {{Jerkass}}: Viktor Chemmel will always give you the inexplicable urge to punch him in his smug face.
** Also Franz Deutcher, Rudy's Hitler Youth leader.
* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Rosa Hubermann. The narration itself states that she really does love Liesel, but she doesn't quite know how to show it. [[HonorAmongThieves Arthur Berg]] also counts, especially compared to [[{{Jerkass}} his successor]]. Death is more of a DeadpanSnarker with a heart of gold.
* [[BatmanInMyBasement Jew In My Basement]]

* KidAnova: Rudy.

* CannotSpitItOut: Liesel to Rudy. ''Just kiss him, already.'' %%stopped here
** Rosa to Liesel in a parental love kind of way.
* CasanovaWannabe: Rudy to Liesel. Yep, even as a kid. And [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] by our [[LemonyNarrator narrator]]:

* ChekhovsGun: Liesel's habit of reading and writing in the Hubermann's basement. [[spoiler:It saves her life when the bombing happens, because the basement shields her from the blows]].
* ChubbyMamaSkinnyPapa: The Hubermanns. Hans is skinny and Rosa is stocky.
* ClusterFBomb: Rosa Hubermann is ''very'' prone to this. And Pfiffikus makes Rosa, in the book's own words, 'look like a saint and a wordsmith'.
* CorporalPunishment: Liesel gets this twice in the same day. The first happens when, instead of reading a passage from a book (she can't read) in front of the class, she instead recites wheat she had memorized from "The Gravedigger's Handbook". The teacher swats her out in the hall to the humor of the class.
** The second was far worse as it was after she [[CurbStompBattle beat up]] Ludwig Schmekl after the above incident by repeatedly calling her stupid for not being able to read. This swatting was far worse and no one in the class were smiling.
* CoversAlwaysLie: A lot of versions of the cover depict a scythe-wielding hooded Death. Y'know, ''exactly'' like how Death specified he DIDN'T look like?
* CrankyNeighbor: The antagonistic Frau Holtzapfel, who detests Rosa Hubermann, and makes it a point to spit on their door handle. She gets friendlier after Liesel starts to read to her.
* CurseOfTheAncients: A meta example: taking place in the 1930s and 40s, the insults "Saukerl" and "Saumensch" get thrown around a lot, terms that have largely become obsolete in modern-day German.
* DaddysGirl: Liesel, after the adoption.
* DemotedToExtra: Death, who's the book's narrator, only has a few voiceovers through the film (the beginning, the end, and a few {{Time Skip}}s).
* DidNotGetTheGirl: Because [[spoiler:Rudy dies before Liesel can return his feelings]].
* DiesWideOpen: Liesel's little brother, Werner dies this way.
* DisappearedDad: Liesel has never met or seen her biological father.
* [[DontFearTheReaper Don't Fear the Reaper]]: Death, the narrator, is amusing, non-linear and rather compassionate towards humans, particularly the other main characters. He even describes cradling the souls of particularly vulnerable or sad people, like children or the Jews killed in the death camps, in his arms. Given that it's a book about World War II, the "amusing" part takes a sharp turn. The death camp scenes, unsurprisingly, are particularly bad.
* DrivenToSuicide: [[spoiler: Michael Holtzapfel.]]
* DumbBlonde: Played with with Rudy Steiner. He isn't exactly an idiot, but with the way he acts, [[ObfuscatingStupidity it's hard to tell at times]], so he kind of falls in GeniusDitz territory as well.
* EverybodyDiesEnding: [[spoiler: Almost the entire cast in one scene, giving us quite the DownerEnding.]]
* EverybodysDeadDave: [[spoiler: Liesel is the only one to survive when Himmel Street is bombed.]]
* FirstKiss: A sad example here: [[spoiler: Liesel and Rudy have their first kiss when she sees Rudy's body being carted out of the rubble and hopes to wake him up with the kiss he's been always dreaming of.]]
* ForTheEvulz: Basically why Viktor Chemmel steals from farmers, even though he's a well-provided for rich boy.
* ForegoneConclusion: About half way through the book, Death accidentally spoils that [[spoiler: Rudy dies]] because he is bad at mystery. It's still a TearJerker.
** The ending itself is a ForegoneConclusion as well, as Death warns in the early pages that [[SnicketWarningLabel Liesel's story doesn't have a happy ending.]]
* GratuitousGerman: The characters often use German words and such, maybe to remind us that they aren't really speaking English.
* TheGrimReaper: Subverted. At one point, Death even [[LampShade lampshades]] this trope by telling us how amusing the whole 'grim reaper with scythe and cloak' thing is.

* AdaptationDistillation: What did you expect? The movie cut out some lesser elements from the book, and the main plotlines featured in the film were simplified. It also cut a few of the minor characters out. Most notably, Franz Deutscher had a much larger role in the film, becoming a compression of several minor characters.
* AlliterativeName: Hans Hubermann.
* AlmostKiss: [[ShipTease Liesel to Rudy]] when they're celebrating his birthday in his father's shop.
** [[spoiler: A final time]] when they're in the forests together, after Liesel admits she told Max about Rudy.
* TheAtoner: Ilsa Hermann is a version of this, never lighting fires, always opening windows, constantly living in a cold, dreary house because of how [[spoiler: her son froze to death]].
* AwLookTheyReallyDoLoveEachOther: Even though Hans and Rosa are locked in TheMasochismTango, Hans brings eggs back to Rosa and genuinely cares for her, while Rosa prayed for Hans' safety with his accordion every night [[spoiler: when he was sent to war]].
* BeigeProse: Several sections of Death's narration is this:

* BerserkButton: DO NOT call Liesel stupid. She'll [[CurbStompBattle mess you up]].
* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: Himmel Street is bombed. Almost everybody except Liesel dies. Max lives through the concentration camp and comes back to Liesel, however and that Liesel herself lives a long and fulfilled life. She marries, has children, and dies happily in her Manhattan apartment. Death also returns her book of memoirs.]]
* {{Blackface}}: Rudy, earlier in the book, as an homage to Jesse Owens. His father sets him straight. It should be noted that the issue here isn't that [[{{DeliberateValuesDissonance}} anyone's concerned about offending black people,]] it's that Rudy's a boy growing up in UsefulNotes/NaziGermany and this kind of behavior could get him in serious trouble.
* BookBurning: One is held in Molching. Liesel rescues ''The Shoulder Shrug'' from the pile of "objectionable materials" being burnt. (In the movie, it's '' Literature/TheInvisibleMan''.)
* CannotSpitItOut: Liesel to Rudy. ''Just kiss him, already.''

->''"It's just a small story really, about, among other things:\\

* And quite a lot of thievery\\
I saw the book thief three times."''
-->-- '''[[LemonyNarrator Death]]''', from the prologue

Set in WWII-era Germany, The Book Thief tells the story of a twelve-year-old girl called Liesel Meminger, the eponymous book thief, living with her foster parents, Hans and Rosa Hubermann. This book is entirely narrated from the perspective of Death--[[LemonyNarrator who has surprisingly witty and dry sense of humor]] (and uses beautiful metaphors a lot). Written by Creator/MarkusZusak. A film adaptation was released in 2013, starring [[Creator/SophieNelisse Sophie Nélisse]] as Liesel and Creator/GeoffreyRush and Emily Watson as the Hubermanns.

[[{{TearJerker}} Keep some tissues handy.]]

!!This work provides examples of:

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: Himmel Street is bombed. [[KillEmAll Almost everybody except Liesel dies]]. Max lives through the concentration camp and comes back to Liesel, however and that Liesel herself lives a long and fulfilled life. She marries, has children, and dies happily in her Manhattan apartment. Death also returns her book of memoirs.]]

* KarmaHoudini: Both Franz Deutcher and Viktor Chemnel get off completely free for bullying Rudy and Liesel, and [[spoiler:it's [[UncertainDoom never mentioned]] whether they were [[KillEmAll killed in the bombing of Molching]].]]

* KillEmAll: [[spoiler: Almost the entire cast in one scene, giving us quite the DownerEnding.]]

Set in WWII-era Germany, The Book Thief tells the story of a twelve-year-old girl called Liesel Meminger, the eponymous book thief, living with her foster parents, Hans and Rosa Hubermann. This book is entirely narrated from the perspective of Death--[[LemonyNarrator who has surprisingly witty and dry sense of humor]] (and uses beautiful metaphors a lot). Written by Creator/MarkusZusak. A film adaptation was released in 2013, starring Sophie Nélisse as Liesel and Creator/GeoffreyRush and Emily Watson as the Hubermanns.

* CoversAlwaysLie: A lot of versions of the cover depict a scythe-wielding hooded Death. Y'know, ''exactly'' like how Death specified they DIDN'T look like?