The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak

In 1939, Liesel Meminger stole her first book.  It was The Grave Diggers Handbook.  It was left at her brother's grave.  She was left with foster parents in the city of Molching while her mother disappeared into the chaos that was to become Nazi Germany.  Some days she played soccer in the streets.  Some days Jews marched on those streets on their way to Dachau.  Eventually bombs would drop to destroy the streets forever.  She saved one book from Nazi flames and stole others from a rich woman's library.  She cherished one written by a man hidden in the basement and wrote one herself.   She understood the great gift of words and their power to create an unimaginable horror.  Death, the narrator in this story, saw it all.