Starting The Book Thief

I decided to read The Book Thief by Markus Zusak after hearing nothing but amazing reviews of the book. 552 total pages, but I'm only on 14... So I don't really have any idea what the story is about.

The book starts out with a prologue, where Death introduces himself as the narrator. He describes the 3 times he saw the book thief. The first was when her brother died on the train to their new foster home. The second was when Death came to collect a pilot from a crashed plane. And third, after the bombing of a German town.

Reading from the perspective of Death is quite different. You get to see the world in colors. He associates a color with each sighting. White, for the snow on the ground next to the stopped train. Black, for the darkness before dawn when the plane plummeted to the ground. Red, for the red sky with the ashflackes falling to the ground. Put these colors together and you get the Nazi flag. "They fall on top of each other. The scribbled signature black, onto the blinding global white, onto the thick soupy red" (Zusak 14). This allows you to conclude that the setting of the book is in Nazi Germany during World War ll.

The movie for The Book Thief recently came out last year. Here's the trailer:

The False Prince

Over the Summer, I read The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen. The main protagonist of the book is Sage. Sage is that character who you can't help but fall in love with. He made the story come alive. So my whole post will be about him.

You first meet Sage as an orphan boy, stealing on the streets for survival. Then Bevin Conner finds him. And he is given the opportunity to compete for the throne, Prince Jaron's crown. The long lost Prince Jaron of Carthya to be exact. Basically, the royal family is dead, and Conner's plan is to have an impostor become king so he can have more power. That's the basic plot of the story. Sage meets the other "contestants", Roden, Tobias, and Latamer. But what makes Sage stand out from the rest is his defiant nature. When the boys were taken to Conner's manor for training, Sage was the only one who had to be tied up and forced to go. He knew that following Conner's orders would leave him a puppet. "'He wants to own me. If I give in to him on this, then there's nothing left of me.'"(Nielsen 138) Freedom or the chance to be King? Sage would choose freedom. That's all he ever wanted. 

This ties into a theme of the book, which was fulfilling your role in society. And that probably makes no sense. How does Sage wanting freedom connect to his role for his country. Well, there's this huge plot twist, which I guess I will talk about. So if you don't want to read spoilers, stop right here.

SAGE IS THE PRINCE JARON...

What happened was that when Jaron was young, his parents decided to send him away to a school so he could learn to be more of a prince, and control that mind of his. His arrogance plus his smart mouth got him into a lot of trouble. But of course, Jaron didn't want to leave. He decided he would sneak away to his "freedom". Little did he know that the ship he was to be on was attacked by pirates and Prince Jaron was presumably dead. His father told him he could not come back and now had to take upon a fake identity, the identity of Sage.

Once this was revealed in the book, you were able to see how much Sage cared for his country. Haunted by his past, yet determined to have Carthya ruled under the right king. Sage took responsibility. Yes, he was the same 14 year old boy rebel, but he now put Carthya above himself. As his father had said, "'You're not disowned and it's not a punishment. It's what your country demands of you now.'"(Nielsen 267)

The False Prince Review
This link leads to the review that made me choose this book for my summer reading. I hope it will convince you to read it too.