The Book Thief

In the very beginning of The Book Thief the reader meets a shy little girl named Liesel.  She is struggling with the fact that her brother just died.  Her mom decides to send her away to live with the Hubermanns.  When she gets to the Hubermann’s house she refused to get out of the car.  She is sad and upset that her mom sent her away and at that time she did not know why.  She feels abandonment from her mother.  Rosa Hubermann was yelling at her to get out, so Hans walked over to her and got her out of the car.  The reader can sense that she is going to be closer to Hans than Rosa.

Another conflict that Liesel struggled with was that she wanted to fit in at school with the rest of her peers.  She could not do this because she does not know how to read or write.  So Hans decides that he is going to teach her every night on how to read and write.  She looked up to Hans as being a father figure towards her considering she grew up without a father.  Hans gain Liesel’s love and trust.  Liesel started to take more responsibility when Rosa gave her the job to pick up the washing from the rich people.

Liesel does not like that fact something happen to her mother considering her mother was not writing back any letters to her.  Her foster parents would not tell her the truth on what happen to her mother.  Liesel figured it out what happen to her mother when she went to Hitler’s birthday celebration.  She told Hans that she blames Hitler for her mother’s disappearance.  Hans slapped her across the face for saying that.  She realizes that she cannot speak badly about Hitler.  She has to ‘Heil Hitler.’

A Jew showed up at the house named Max.  Hans told Liesel that she had to keep a secret about Max living with them.  I think that is a lot of responsibility for a young girl to keep a secret.  She was not allowed to tell anyone about Max.  Hans told her if she would tell anyone her foster parents and Max would be taken away from her.

I really liked this character because she is a very strong girl considering everything she went through.  It amazes me how quickly she learned how to read and write by Hans writing the alphabet and the words down.

Blog 2-Maus Theme

While I was reading Maus I noticed that Vladik treats Mala and Anja very differently. Vladik got married to Anja. Her family was very wealthy. He took care of her and protected her. He treated her with respect. As the novel progresses, he would get very emotional when he talks about his first wife, Anja. I think, after she passed away he felt alone and missed her greatly. Vladik took it really hard when he saw Artie's “Prisoner on the Hell Planet”. This was Artie’s short comic about how his mother committed suicide.


He got married to his second wife who is Mala. He claims Mala is only after his money. He told Artie that he had to change his will so many different times. He's always yelling and arguing with her because he feels she is always doing something wrong. Mala is getting sick and tired of him because she feels that she cannot do anything right. He does not treat her with respect and he seems very unhappy when he is living with Mala. He is always complaining to Artie about Mala but Artie does not want to hear about it anymore.

When I was reading I looked at the words and images together. I learned to pay more attention to the visual, sound, gestural interpretation, and spatial features that Spiegelman used in Maus. I started to think more and look at the images and words and started to guess on what is going to happen next.

About me

My name is Kaitlyn Slothour.  I'm a junior at Shippensburg University.  I'm majoring in Elementary Education with a minor in reading.  I like to play tennis and volleyball.  I love hanging out with my friends and family.  I'm interested in reading different types of graphic novels.  Most of these novels that we are going to be reading I never heard of them.  The last book I read was Dead and Gone by Charline Harris.  Cultural diversity is learning about different societies and cultures in the world.  I'm hoping to learn and read about different societies and cultures.  My thoughts about cultural diversity is that people are more willing to accept other people's style of living.  There seems to be a greater amount of different races now living in the United States.