![Picture](/uploads/9/7/9/0/97905296/published/th.jpg?250)
Narrated by Death, The Book Thief is the story of Lisle Meminger, a nine-year-old German girl who given up by her mother to live with Hans and Rosa Huberman in the small town of Mooching in 1939, shortly before World War II
She is moved up to her proper age level, but she is still bad at reading and gets quite a few watschen. One day in November there is a reading test at school where all the students have to get up, one at a time, and read something out loud. The teacher, Sister Maria, tries to excuse Liesel from the test but Liesel insists that she wants to read. She gets up and opens the book, but she blanks on the words. Feeling useless and at the verge of tears, she starts quoting from The Grave Digger's Handbook. Sister Maria stops her and takes her into the hall for a watschen, while all the other children except Rudy laugh. During their break a boy named Ludwig Schmeikl taunts Liesel and calls her an idiot. Liesel snaps and starts beating him up and cursing him with Rosa's curses. Then she turns to a boy named Tommy Müller and starts beating him up too just because he was smiling. Finally Liesel stops and declares, "I'm not stupid." When they go back inside she gets a huge watschen from Sister Maria, but no one laughs.
|