A Night of Learning

                 

      Every night Leisel Memminger would dream, in every dream, she would see her brother and it would turn into a nightmare. So, her father would come and console her, making sure she was okay. This was their nightly ritual.

      One night she had an accident and her father started to change her sheets, but while doing so he found out she was the Book Thief. Her first book fell out from under her mattress. When he asked her if it hers she replied, “It wasn’t always mine.”

      So they started a new nightly ritual, they started learning how to read. Hans already knew how, but he wasn’t very good. But either way he would always find a way to teach Liesel something new.

      I find it so cute that her adoptive-father would sit with her all night while she slept just to make sure that she was okay. I love the fact that she's adopted and that he hasn't know her for that long, but they have this unbelievable bond. 

Young Love

        Rudy has always been a lady's man. He knew the first time that he laid eyes on Liesel, that he loved her and they were going to be best friends. He shows's Liesel around, and always hangs out with her at school, when no one else will. When your reading the book, you feel like and hope that even though Liesel doesn't like Rudy back, one day she will. One day after school, they decide to race, but they bet on themselves. Since neither of them had any money, Rudy asked for a kiss if he won, and Liesel asked to be exempt from goalie duty in soccer if she won. It ended in a tie, but Liesel swore to herself that she would never kiss Rudy.
         Liesel finds Rudy to be a very weird person, sort of special. When you read his story, you feel his quirkiness, it radiates of the pages of the book. Rudy is such an important character that a whole chapter is dedicated to him and his characterization. When Rudy was younger, he learned about a black Olympic runner, who won the gold metal. He wanted to feel special like the runner, Jess Owens. He took charcoal and colored himself black and went to the park to recreate the track and field portion of the Olympics. When his father found him he had just "won the race." His father chastised him and told him that he shouldn't want to be anyone other than himself. He tells him that being white and having blond hair and blue eyes, makes him lucky at a time like this. You see, his father had joined the Nazi Party, in an effort to keep is large family safe. Rudy never understood what his father had told him, but as years passed he got older, and Hitler became more powerful, and her finally understood what his father had been telling him that summer night.

Ein neues Zuhause (a new home)

     In Part I, the story takes a sharp turn back to the first time Death met Liesel Meminger. On a train a boy died, while he was collecting the soul, Death saw the Book Thief, shaking her brother, hoping that the fear in the pit of her stomach was wrong. He followed her and her mother as they exited the train with the boys tiny body in his mothers arms. At her brother's funeral, Liesel found a small book in the snow, she took it and hid it away from her mother, while she is being dragged away from her brothers grave. Leaving her brother behind, Liesel and her mother continued their journey.

"The book thief had struck for the first time-the beginning of and illustrious career"

    Liesel doesn't know how to read nor write but she knows how powerful words can be.

    When they arrive, Liesel is handed over to a foster care worker, and her mother disappears. When they arrive to Liesel's new home, she refuses to get out of the car and is harshly chastised by her new mother, but it's her new fathers soothing and inviting face that lures her out. 

    On Himmel street Liesel learns a lot about her harsh mother and kind father. Even though she has nightmares about  her brothers death, she embraces her new life. She meets Rudy who automatically likes her and want to be her best friend. And goes to school where at first she is forced to study with the youger groups since she cannot read or write, but she is soon transferred to a special "Hitler School."

    You don't realize that it is the time of WWII, but subtly the author drops hints cluing you into the idea and foreshadowing the future. The book is a bit morbid, since it is in the perspective of Death, but it gives it a bit of edge. I personally find Deaths directness a bit funny. 

The Three Sisters

         The theme of this folktale is very complicated, even more so then the folktale itself. The story is trying to tech you that, no evil goes unpunished. It's about three sisters. The mom and the two eldest are evil, unattractive, and unlucky, but Nella, the third, is beautiful, kind, smart, and courteous. Nella and a Price fall in love and secretly get married. He builds a magic tunnel from his castle to Nella's house allowing him to reach her.
         Once Nella's wicked sisters find out, they go into the tunnel and break it. When the Prince tries to go see Nella he is badly hurt by the crystals and is unable to find a cure. Nella's disguises herself, and sets off to find the cure. She does and saves the prince, and gets her reward, marriage to the Price. That was an ironic twist because they are already married, but the Price does't recognize her and proclaims his eternal love for Nella. When she reveals herself, he tells her that her sisters are the culprits and they are punished for their actions.
         Nell's could be considered a Folktale hero, because she is an ordinary person who is extremely kind, smart, and clever. She is forced to go one an adventure to save the love of her life. She suffers greatly thinking that she is the cause of his pain, but once she overcomes her problem, she gets a reward, marriage to the Prince.

Red, White, and Black

 
     The first time Death meets the Book Thief, she is just a little girl, standing in a world painted in white, shivering, staring down at the lifeless body of her brother. He hates these people, the ones left behind, but he finds her particularly interesting. Crossing paths with the Book Thief at three other occasions, including her death, Death tells, Leslie's story at a very abstract point of view. The novel, set in Nazi Germany, is very captivating and attracting after only the first 10 pages. In the prologue of the book he tells you about each time that he met the book thief. He focuses on the red sky and the special sign that he sees on the life he went to collect, and the black ashes falling from the sky the third time they crossed paths.

"***A SPECTACULARLY TRAGIC MOMENT***

A train was moving quickly.

It was packed with humans.

A six-year-old boy died in the third carriage."

      This part of the book is my favorite. After every couple of paragraphs there is a stop, like a sort of blunt foreshadowing of what is going to happen. Even though I'm only at page 20, the story feels like it's already gotten very deep.