Why would saying she hadn't gone through puberty make one want to ship them?
Am I the only one who's sad that no one can write an Intergenerational Friendship without people seeing subtext and accusing the author of intentionally trying to pull "pedomance?" Because honestly, I only ever saw Liesel and Max as close friends. As for Rudy and Liesel, I saw them more as best friends with some romantic interest on Rudy's side.
I also second piearty's point. That conclusion honestly sounded like a non-sequitur.
As for whether or not the Tear Jerkers affected you, that is always a Your Mileage May Vary issue.
I have to admit, the only thing I actually enjoy about the book now after re-reading it was the cover and the font, plus the fact the book was narrated by Death. Everything else seemed so cliche and boring to the point where I questioned why I liked it in the first place.
Plus, I agree. Nazi Germany, again? I understand it was tough then, but does every single book have to be set at that time?
I'M GOING TO GET OUT OF THE U.S, WITH OR WITHOUT YOU!!!
What does it matter what time period it was set to? Should people suddenly stop writing fantasy or about ancient Rome, just because others have done it so many times before?
I found the friendship between Max and Liesel very touching and there was no indication of any romance what so ever. If anything, think they were like siblings, which is a nice aversion of the situation - you would at first think Liesel might start hating Max, because his presence threatens her family, but instead he becomes a big brother. Which I think is something very warm and, for lack of a better word, human.
Please don't feed the trolls!
Compared to ancient Rome (say 750 BC-1450 AD, i.e. 2200 years), Nazi Germany (say 1930s-1945, i.e. 15 years) is a short period in history, yet suffers from an excessive amount of books about "good Germans who (gasp!) hide Jews in their basements". Because of political correctness, we will probably never have YA (fiction) books about Nazi Germany where the protagonists aren't heroically defying the Nazis in some way, which means we're only ever presented with an extremely narrow view of the time and place.
Murmeltier, you actually want books where the nazis are sympathized with?
I remember reading several books written by polish authors and translated to English where (a) instead of a Jew there was a communist (b) the characters were polish occupied by nazis and not fighting but surviving or (c) the cause itself was somewhat sympathized with which I personally found very disturbing.
If you want a book sympathizing with people who declared gays, jews, the disabled, and dissidents subhumans deserving enslavement or death, you should read Mein Kampf.
Christ on a crutch, man.
Let's eat, grandma! Let's eat grandma! Commas save lives.
Well, I just read the book for high school, and I quite liked it. I can't relate to the "Nazi Germany? Again?" because I've honestly never had to read a book like that for school. For me they're always about the civil rights movement/slavery in America; I actually found "The Book Thief" a quite refreshing change, and definitely not narm. Also, I really did not see the Liesel/Max ship. I believe the comment about her not yet having gone through puberty was to highlight her childishness/innocence, and how so much grief a young girl could come to in Nazi Germany.
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Like Ciaphas Cain...only less...well...good...
When I first started reading the book, the first thing that struck me was the fact that the prose voice of Death is very similar to that of Ciaphas Cain, which I must say is what got me through the first couple chapters without serious impediment. I dug the humor and kept reading until...well it's hard say, because after a while, shit stopped happening and the book went without noticeable landmarks for, God, like three-fourths of the book. In a sudden twist(?) we have the Hubermanns hiding a Jew! Oh, you know, just like every single other book about Nazi Germany ever? I never saw that one coming! </sarcasm>
I was honestly appalled as I read the book by its often arbitrary commentary on the morals of the Nazi Party. Not that I support them myself, I definitely don't, but when you have Death Himself putting himself against the Fuehrer, now you're just pushing your opinions on people.
When the war starts to affect the citizens of Molching in earnest, I am uncomfortably reminded of the bullshit that calls itself A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, the worst book I've ever read, but that's a story for another day.
Anyway, in my humble, humble opinion, the author has completely failed to make me engrossed enough to be sympathetic to the characters, to the point where when I read the Tear Jerker section on the main article, I can't help but suppress a chuckle at the memory.
Everyone's thinking it, I hate to be the one to say it, but isn't it kind of obvious that there was shipping going down between Max and Liesel? The book is always all, "Rudy and Liesel" this and "Rudy and Liesel" that, but the light romance between those two really didn't have much heart and seemed like the author was just trying to distract us from the pedomance he was pulling. In the epilogue, when it doesn't reveal the name of Liesel's husband, only one name came immediately to my mind. You have two guesses who it was (Hint: It's not Rudy). When Liesel is thirteen, Death says something to the effect of, "She had a flat chest and had not yet bled," which has literally no significance to the story at all unless you want to ship Max and Liesel.
I'll just close by saying that Nazi Germany? Really? There are so many different interesting time periods that this could have been in that aren't so overused. But Nazi Germany? Again?