Summer Reading Entry 2

The characters in The Book Thief are extremely diverse an intricate. Each of the main characters has a personality that they don't waver from. Rosa Hubbermann is seen as ignorant and holding too much self pride to see the world around her.She has not an will not show any sort of change in heart during the course of the book. Hans Hubbermann is the complete opposite of Rosa and will go out of his way to make someone's day, even if it means ruining his own. Liesel is very torn up inside because of the quick loss of her father, brother and being taken away from her mother, but it appears as though she might change later on in the book. She desperately clings to a small black book that she found lying in the snow the night her brother was buried. It is the only memories she has of her brother and the last time she saw her mother. Some themes that are beginning to appear are the thoughts of lose and suffering. Liesel is consistently tortured by nightmares of her mother and brother. She also has to cope with their lose and her new foster parents ( mostly Rosa, but Hans might be an unlikely suspect later on). Rosa seems to be one of the main sources of suffering for Liesel because she uses her most of the time to take care of herself, instead of thinking what is best for Liesel. The book is structured a little abnormally. The narrator is death, and what he sees though his eye looking into Liesel's world. There are small interventions when needed for clarifications and some of the dialogs is translated from German to English, with the German coming first and the English repeated right afterwards.

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Summer Reading Entry One

For my summer reading project I am reading The Book Thief by the author Markus Zusak. It is about the story of a girl named Liesel Meminger, who had her family ripped from her at a young age. She was moved into the care of her new foster parents, Hans Hubbermann and Rosa Hubbermann. Hans Hubbermann is an extremely kind fellow who would go out of his way to make another persons day. He is a painter and plays the piano accordion in the local inns and bars around town in the winter to supplement income over the winter. Rosa Hubbermann is the poler opposite of her husband, being mean and shrude towards almost anyone she meets. She believes the world revolves around her and that she is privileged. Some other characters include the residents of Himmel Street. The book describes them as such, " Rudy Steiner- The boy next door who was obsessed with the black American athlete Jesse Owens.Frau Diller - the staunch Aryan corner-shop owner.Tommy Müller - a kid whose chronic ear infections had resulted in several operations, a pink river of skin painted across his face, and a tendency to twitch.A man known primarily as "Pfiffikus" - whose vulgarity made Rosa Hubbermann look like a wordsmith and a saint." - Markus Zusak.
The setting of The Book Thief is the rise and fall of Hitler (1933-1945) and is located in a small town near Münich. It is a very dark setting, seeing how Liesel is torn away from her family and put with a foster family that makes her life a misery. My predictions for the book are that Liesel will start to buck up against Rosa and that both Hans and Rosa will be drafted into the war( this was hinted to in a earlier quote in the book). There has been a movie made about this book, but I have not seen it., although I can see the connections an thought that went into including the characters into 1930's-40's Germany as Liesel is placed into the Hitler Youth program.