Summer Assignment #4 (7/23)

In this post, we're supposed to be talking about what made us want to read this book and also who would we recommend it to. So the reasons I had for reading this book were not super profound and planned. I had already seen the movie and we owned it before I even knew it was on the list. When I was looking at the book list, I didn't see any books that seemed really interesting to me and then I saw this one. I enjoyed the movie when we saw it, and thought it would probably be a good book too. The fact that we already had a copy that I could write in made the reading part a lot easier to go back to and know what I was going to write in these posts.
    
     As for connections I made to the book, I made a couple. When I was in the 4th and 5th grade, all I did with my free time was read, very similar to Liesel reading anything she could get her hands on. Another I made was to the rough foster mother (referenced in one of the previous posts) who did not seem all that nice but did love Liesel and was not as mean or rough as she seemed at first.

     Who would I recommend this book to? Well I'm not entirely sure, but I guess that's the idea of a recommendation. Well, if you want a happy story (at the end, at least) that's a little different from the others, this is your book. If reading is your life (and you haven't already read it) I recommend this for you because you'll find many connections with Liesel and will like the characters.

I found a short biography/article of Markus Zusak that includes his other books here.

Summer Assignment #3 (7/23)

This hook that I thought effectively grabbed the reader's attention, is found near the beginning:

 

"***HERE IS A SMALL FACT***

You are going to die.

 

 

 

 

I am in all truthfulness attempting to be cheerful about this whole topic, though most people find themselves hindered in believing me, no matter my protestations. please, trust me. I most definitely can be cheerful. I can be amiable. Agreeable. Affable. And that's only the A's. Just don't ask me to be nice. Nice has nothing to do with me."(3)

 

 

 

     So you have read the hook and now you have made your own opinions about it already, regardless of what I write here. So I'm not going to try and persuade you that this is a good hook, only that I think it is. What I am going to do is tell you the background to the quote/hook.

 

     The speaker is Death, if you haven't read my other summer assignment posts yet, and he's very sarcastic in his narration of the story. The book really focuses on what life means and how it matters. The how it matters to the people around you part is especially well hit on by the emphasis put on it by Death. He puts this emphasis on it by throughout the story, telling the reader how each person died, but in an oddly descriptive way. No, he doesn't tell the gory details if they died from war, but his details are focused more on the victims last moments of life as opposed to their first without. He talks about how they were feeling before they died, and how peaceful they were, and often tells what they were thinking about (if they were awake). I don't want to spoil the ending, but some people die suddenly close to Liesel and it has a very almost overemphasized peacefulness part to the description of the story by Death. That is how this hook ties in with the whole book and how the last line somewhat foreshadows the conclusion.

 

 





Summer Assignment #2 (7/02)

     For this post, we have to describe what each of the main characters want. So, I'll start with the most prominent character, who I talked about in the first post. So Liesel is learning to read and that's her main focus but as the narration put it, "What was there to be angry about? What had happened in the past four or five months to culminate in such a feeling? In short, the answer traveled from Himmel Street, to the Fuhrer, to the unfindable location of her real mother, and back again. Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness." I think that this starts to get Liesel a lot more developed in the story as her deep thoughts and motives are foreshadowed in this short passage. Her foster parents, like most people in their village, want to just stay alive but still keep their morality by helping a Jewish man stay there in secret for months. The Jewish man wants, like them, to stay alive but he also enjoys the time because he reads at night with Liesel. Those are really all of the characters with clear or implied wants/fears.

      One theme I think is appearing in the book, particularly emphasized by Death being the narrator is, "Life is so short so don't worry about the small things and make something out of your life, since it can be taken away at any time." I think this is one theme because the book is about these people that have physical problems (such as starving or for the Jewish man being killed), but what the book more focuses on are the moral problems (usually relating to putting yourself in more risk of the physical problems). I think this is a good theme because we are so focused on the things that don't matter when you step back and look at your whole life. We should focus more on what really matters and less on little problems.

      I already briefly referenced how the book is structured in the first post, but I'll get a little more detailed in this one. The book is narrated by Death, portrayed as sarcastic and humorous in this book. His little side comments are found every few pages and give some information to an interesting translation (because some of the insults are in German) or give us some information that we otherwise wouldn't have about a new character's background or relationship to the story. The rest of the story is just plain narration with some dialogue but more of the story as opposed to the characters talking. This is probably on purpose so the narrator can put in some of the character's thoughts and emotions instead of the reader having to try and figure that out from dialogue (because obviously you don't just blurt out everything you think and feel to the world so it's simpler for the reader).

I found an interview transcript with the author, Markus Zusak, and I thought it was really good and talks about what he thinks of the book and how he structured it and why.