Death himself narrates the World War II-era story of Liesel Meminger from the time she is taken, at age nine, to live in Molching, Germany, with a foster family in a working-class neighborhood of tough kids, acid-tongued mothers, and loving fathers who earn their living by the work of their hands. The child arrives having just stolen her first bookalthough she has not yet learned how to readand her foster father uses it, The Gravediggers...

Although they are able to escape Hitler's Germany, Leah and Louis are unable to find a country which will take them in.