What happens in Part One of The Book Thief?
Part One opens in the heart of winter, 1939, as nine-year-old Liesel Meminger makes her way by train with her mother and younger brother, Werner, toward the town of Molching. There, she is set to be fostered by Hans and Rosa Hubermann on Himmel Street. Tragically, Werner dies during the journey, prompting the train to stop so he can be buried in a small cemetery near the tracks. It’s in the frozen mud beside her brother's grave that Liesel steals her first book — The Grave Digger's Handbook, which one of the gravediggers has dropped. Although she can’t read it yet, she holds it tightly as a charm against her grief. After delivering Liesel to the Hubermanns, her mother vanishes from the story without any explanation or goodbye. Liesel struggles with bedwetting and screams through nightmares, but she gradually begins to connect with Hans — a silver-eyed man who plays the accordion and shows a quiet patience that is new to her. This section introduces the geography of Molching, the ominous shadow of Nazi Germany, and the everyday life of a household that will become Liesel's entire world.
Analysis
Markus Zusak begins The Book Thief with a unique narrative choice: Death is the storyteller, and it has already revealed the ending. In Part One, dramatic irony isn't just a device; it's a way for us to grieve in advance, reflecting Liesel's own constant sense of impending loss. The stolen Grave Digger's Handbook serves as a powerful symbol: this manual for burial becomes Liesel's first encounter with literacy, linking reading to the theme of mortality right from her first act of theft. Zusak's writing style is intentionally fragmented — short, punchy sentences break up longer, more lyrical moments, echoing how trauma disturbs the flow of time. Death's interjections ("Here is a small fact: you are going to die") act like chapter titles and reset the tone, keeping sentiment in check before it becomes overly sentimental. The color themes introduced in the prologue (white snow, black train smoke, the red of Werner's cheeks) serve as Death's emotional cues, a color scheme that will evolve throughout the story. Hans Hubermann's accordion is mentioned almost casually, yet it quickly establishes him as a source of warmth amidst the harsh, bureaucratic machinery of the Reich. Rosa's tough demeanor is depicted with a sharp, dry humor that avoids simplistic villainy. Zusak is already guiding the reader on how to interpret his story: tenderness exists within harshness, and books endure because someone was willing to steal them out of desperation.
Key quotes from Part One
“Here is a small fact: You are going to die.”
Death addresses the reader directly in the prologue to Part One, establishing its role as narrator and setting the novel's tone of foreknowledge and inevitable loss.
“The book thief had struck for the first time — the beginning of an illustrious career.”
Death marks the moment Liesel lifts *The Grave Digger's Handbook* from the snow beside her brother's grave, framing petty theft as the origin of a life defined by words.
“He was the first to truly understand that words and writing could be a form of survival.”
Reflecting on Hans Hubermann's patient nightly readings with Liesel in her new bedroom, Death signals the novel's central thesis about literacy as resistance and refuge.