In april 1938 the young Liesel Meminger travels with her mother and her younger brother in a train, when the boy dies. At the funeral Liesel discoves a book next to the grave, "The Gravediggers Handbook", which she takes with her. Liesels mother, a communist, causes that her daughter is brought to a forster family to not endanger her. Liesel there becomes friends with the boy next door Rudy and as her forster father Hans notices that she cannot read he teaches her with help of the stolen book. Thus she becomes a passionate reader. But at the mean time the experiences of the protagonists are overshadowed by the terror of the Second World War and their lives are changing irretrievable.