When Hans discovers the book, he doesn’t punish her. Two years later, when the local Nazi party sponsors a book burning, Liesel steals her second book from the smoldering pile of banned stories. Liesel’s days are spent struggling to catch up in school, playing soccer with Rudy Steiner (her best friend) and the other children in her neighborhood, helping Rosa deliver laundry to her customers throughout Molching and reading with Hans at night when recurring nightmares wake her. He uses it to help her improve her reading. Hans discovers Liesel’s first literary theft, The Gravedigger’s Handbook, under her mattress. She ultimately comes to call Hans and Rosa Papa and Mama. It is Hans’ gentle care and accordion playing that eventually softens the girl’s heart. Grieving the death of her brother and the loss of her mother, Liesel takes time to adapt to her new surroundings. Liesel’s mother accompanies her to a foster home in Molching, Germany, where she gives the girl into the care of Hans Hubermann, a housepainter, and his wife, Rosa. It is through Death’s words that we become voyeurs into Liesel’s life over the next four years. He watches as she mourns at her brother’s graveside and steals a book that falls from a gravedigger’s pocket.
Although few humans interest him enough to stay nearby once his task is done, 9-year-old Liesel intrigues him. Death has come to take the soul of her sick brother. Death, the narrator of this book, first meets Liesel Meminger in 1939 as she, her little brother and her mother travel on a train.
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