protect the diamonds
survive the clubs
dig deep through the spades
feel the hearts
 
Ed Kennedy is an underage cabdriver without much of a future. He's pathetic at playing cards, hopelessly in love with his best friend, Audrey, and utterly devoted to his coffee-drinking dog, the Doorman. His life is one of peaceful routine and incompetence until he inadvertently stops a bank robbery.
 
That's when the first ace arrives in the mail.
 
That's when Ed becomes the messenger.
 
Chosen to care, he makes his way through town helping and hurting (when necessary) until only one question remains: Who's behind Ed's mission?
A 2005 Michael L. Printz Honor Book and recipient of five starred reviews, I Am the Messenger is a cryptic journey filled with laughter, fists, and love.

 Back to top | e-mail or print this page

WINNER 2006 - Texas TAYSHAS High School Reading List
WINNER 2006 - ALA Best Books for Young Adults
WINNER 2006 - Kentucky Bluegrass Master List
HONOR 2006 - Michael L. Printz Honor Book

 Back to top | e-mail or print this page

“The Book Thief is unsettling and unsentimental, yet ultimately poetic. Its grimness and tragedy run through the reader’s mind like a black-and-white movie, bereft of the colors of life. Zusak may not have lived under Nazi domination, but The Book Thief deserves a place on the same shelf with The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel’s Night. It seems poised to become a classic.” -USA Today
"Zusak doesn’t sugarcoat anything, but he makes his ostensibly gloomy subject bearable the same way Kurt Vonnegut did in Slaughterhouse-Five: with grim, darkly consoling humor.”
- Time Magazine
"Elegant, philosophical and moving...Beautiful and important."
- Kirkus Reviews, Starred
"An extraordinary narrative."
- School Library Journal, Starred
"Exquisitely written and memorably populated, Zusak's poignant tribute to words, survival, and their curiously inevitable entwinement is a tour
de force to be not just read but inhabited."
- The Horn Book Magazine, Starred
"One of the most highly anticipated young-adult books in years."
- The Wall Street Journal


From the Hardcover edition.

 Back to top | e-mail or print this page

Markus Zusak is the award-winning author of The Book Thief and I Am the Messenger, both Michael L. Printz Honor Books. An international bestseller, The Book Thief has sold over a million copies in the U.S. alone and has garnered worldwide critical acclaim. The New York Times called it "Brilliant and hugely ambitious. . . . It's the kind of book that can be life changing," and The Guardian (UK) said, "Unsettling, thought-provoking, life-affirming, triumphant and tragic, this is a novel of breathtaking scope, masterfully told. It is an important piece of work, but also a wonderful page-turner."
 
Markus Zusak's writing career began in high school, where he led a "pretty internal existence. . . . I always had stories in my head. So I started writing them." He lives with his wife and daughter in Sydney, Australia, where he is currently working on his new novel for Knopf, Bridge of Clay.

 Back to top | e-mail or print this page