Want to chat with Markus Zusak?

The Book Thief came out in 2006 to instant critical acclaim. After winning the Michael L. Printz Award for the year, sales only increased, and the book has sold about 900,000 copies to date. That’s an incredible number of copies for a densely written, deeply unsettling 550-page book narrated by the grimly omniscient character of Death and set in Nazi Germany.

This might not typically be viewed as the perfect recipe for a modern teen bestseller. But yet here we are–3 years and almost a million copies later.

I came slightly late to the game, reading the book over a year after it had come out.  I wasn’t sure what to expect, since a book with so much buzz often ends up over-inflating my expectations.  But I was completely captivated by Zusak’s work and drawn to his unsentimental and darkly nuanced story of fear and heroism, hope and inevitability, and, of course, the power of the written word.

I’m not at all surprised that this novel has become a huge book club favorite, since it offers so many different topics for discussion. And now Scholastic is giving book clubs around the country the chance to be selected for a telephone or skype chat with Marcus Zusak himself.

In you are interested, you just have to explain “in 100 words or less why your book club is the perfect group of readers for Markus Zusak to speak with.” Check it out here.