10th Grade Summer Reading: Entry #3

            “It’s just a small story really, about, among other things:

            *A girl

            *Some words

            *An accordionist

            *Some fanatical Germans

            *A Jewish fist fighter

            *And quite a lot of thievery

I saw the book thief three times”  (Zusak 5).

           

I choose this excerpt at the end of the prologue because it inspires the reader to want to read further to find out how the things mentioned in the list come together to make a story, thus creating a major hooking effect.  The author, Markus Zusak, put this excerpt in the prologue to hook readers of the story early on before they have a chance to even think about abandoning it.  A list of major elements of the story is given to vaguely outline the story while still leaving a lot of things for the reader to think about and predict.  Also, most of the items on this list can be extremely general and/or seem completely unrelated to each other which makes the reader wonder how exactly the story will be told.  The story itself is also described as a “short story” by the narrator.  Like the things on the list, this description makes the reader wonder about the style the story will be delivered because this line foreshadows that the story takes place over a short period of time but still has a lot of depth.  Lastly, the narrator mentions the fact that he/she has only seen the book thief 3 times, which brings 2 questions into the picture.  How did the narrator happen to stumble across the main character 3 times in such a short period?  How can the narrator tell a story about a person’s life while coming across them at minimal rate?  This excerpt is great for hooking because it puts things in perspective for the reader and yet, leaves so much to think about and inspires the reader to make predictions and read on at an alarming rate.