The Book Thief Continued

 After much thievery and learning to read and write Narrator stops following Liesel for a while and starts following Max. Who's Max? Well, Hans, Liesel's adoptive father, has been going to "work" to meet this Jewish man named Max who is the son of a friend he had during World War One who saved his life in a way. At the time Max was a child and when he grew up he was hidden in a dark room away from the Nazis. Hans went to visit Max everyday claiming he was going to work, but really he was going to give Max food and water so he could survive while Hans thought of a plan to let him be free for a while. He soon did. He did this by buying two copies of Mein Kempf (My Struggle) by Adolf Hitler, one for Liesel to read and one for Max to walk around with. Anyone who sees a man carrying around a book not allowed for Jews will immediately assume he is not Jewish. So he bought him the copy and Max walked out bravely to meet Hans at his home for the first time. While all this is happening there are things going on Liesel's life. The book is called The Book Thief so we of course get to know what is going on in said book thief's life. Liesel and her friend Rudy (Or should I say boyfriend heh heh. I'm kidding they're not dating, they're 11) didn't really have much to connect with besides soccer that they play sometimes. Until Liesel and Rudy stole something together and they immediately had something to talk about, something to do that wasn't soccer. They joined a group of kids who stole food from others to eat which benefited Rudy because he was a poor child and was always starving. Plus who doesn't enjoy a good thievery? Anyway, they joined these kids and did remarkably well on their first day, they stole a bag full of apples from a farm and ate most of them of their way home. Wonder what it'd be like to steal without feeling guilt. Closest I've come was stealing two lollipops on Halloween when the bowl told to me to only take one.

 

 I think the genre of this book is more Realistic Fiction than Historical Fiction. When I first thought about it I immediately thought it was Historical Fiction because it was during the Holocaust and has some troubles regarding the rules of Hitler, but then I thought that since they didn't get into too much about the Holocaust and were just mainly focusing on Liesel's life it didn't really make sense. I mean, if I wrote a book about a boy who knows someone else who is an illegal immigrant and that someone else faced troubles when I'm 70. It wouldn't be a Historical Fiction because, yes, he did face troubles of something that may or may not be in history books, (or whatever we use besides books in the future) but that was just something many people had to deal with because of the way the laws were. In conclusion it is a Realistic Fiction even though I first thought of it as a Historical Fiction.

The Boy Who Dared

The Boy Who Dared is about a boy named Helmuth Hübener and memories he’s having about his past life. The story starts on a Tuesday in his cell where he’s being held to be executed. While he’s in there he remembers times of his childhood like when he was questioning heaven and felt like he could float. He then starts remembering events that led up to him being trapped in a cell waiting to die. He remembers how when he was younger he longed to joining the Hitler Youth, but as he got older he realized that everything the Nazis were doing was wrong and he despised that. He remembers his adoptive father, Hugo, who was an SS officer and talked a lot about the Fuhrer. He remembers how he didn’t accept the ways of the Nazis so he started to go against them making pamphlet with his friends Karl-Heinz, Schnibbe, Rudolf Wobbe, and Gerhard Düwer. He ended up getting arrested for such actions and after being told that they could drop the execution Helmuth wanted to take responsibility for his actions and went to the execution. At this point the memories and the present time line up and that is when he is to be executed and...he's beheaded.

In the beginning of the book when Helmuth was a little cutie, he used to look up to the Fuhrer, Hitler, and he used to dream about becoming a brave soldier to fight for his country. He loved to play with little toy soldiers who were fighting the british, and he was quite the intelligent boy so what he did in the game were real strategies. As he grew up he became even smarter and started to realize that what was being done was wrong. He got in trouble at school for speaking his mind. He got in trouble with the police for speaking his mind, he got in trouble to the point where Nazis put an end to him. He didn't agree with the way of Hitler by the end of it even though he lived with people who did. He listened to BBC and, with his friends, tried to spread the word. If you ask me, I think 9 year old Helmuth wouldn't like 16 year old Helmuth.

NightJohn

 NightJohn is a story about a slave named Sarny who meets a man named NightJohn. The story starts out getting to know Sarny and the woman who takes care of her. When NightJohn is first introduced he is being taken into the plantation by their master with many scars on his back. They don't actually talk to each other until the next night when he asks for tobacco for trade. Sarny has a piece of a tobacco leaf and offers it to NightJohn because she really wanted what he was offering. He was offering reading lessons. Well, he was only offering to teach the letters A B and C but as time went on he ended up teaching her more letters. The first word that she learned was "bad" but was soon caught writing the word on the floor and had to be punished. She gave an excuse that she was drawing so instead of her being punished the master decided to punish his "mother" because he thought that she had something to do with it. Hm, wonder what happened next.

 The genre of NightJohn is Historical Fiction. I can tell it's Historical Fiction because it isn't a real story and it is based on a historical event when slavery was legal. The book doesn't really go into the historical slavery details but it does mention a few things like how they were punished and what they would do if a slave ran away. It's kind of a short book but it isn't a book you'd give to a child at that reading level. 

The Book Thief

 The Book Thief is quite a book. It starts out with the narrator talking to us. They don't have a gender but they do have a job. Narrator takes people's souls when they die so it's like Narrator is a character in it's self. Narrator follows a little girl named Liesel who is referred to by Narrator as The Book Thief. The story is set during the Holocaust in Germany mainly through Liesel's life and not really focusing on the  major events that occurred during the Holocaust. Liesel is born to a single mother and later gets a brother. Her mother cannot take care of them so she puts them up for adoption and is sold to a better family. On the way to this family her brother dies in a train by Narrator. Liesel never sees her mother again but learns to cope with her new family and ends up loving them. She doesn't know how to read at her age so instead of being in 4th grade she has to go to school at Kindergarden. She can't learn to read but she tries with her new father by reading a book she stole (I bet jew did nazi that coming). Slowly she learns to read and enjoys it which just motivates her to steal more books. By now she's stolen three. One place she stole a book was during an event where everyone was supposed to burn a belonging of theirs together with everyone else making a huge fire. Since Liesel was part of the Hitler Youth she was forced to attend. After the fire was out and everyone went home Liesel found a book that had survived and she took it home before the men cleaning up could get to it. The other one she stole was from her school but she didn't like stealing books from there so she returned it.

Holocaust

 People stood by and watched it happen because they didn’t want to interfere and get killed themselves. I think that the people who did stand up were probably straight up crazy or very determined. Those who did had a lot of people to help them but as we know it only caused more chaos. I think I wouldn’t have stood up and just watched as everything happened in fear. If people who stand up get killed and people who don’t get killed then I say don’t stand up because the only difference is how you would suffer.