Number the Stars

Lois Lowry

 Number the Stars 
Lois Lowry

Number the Stars

Synopsis
In 1943, during the German occupation of Denmark, ten-year-old Annemarie learns how to be brave when she helps shelter her Jewish friend Ellen from the Nazis. "Grades three to seven." (SLJ)

Annotation
In 1943, during the German occupation of Denmark, ten-year-old Annemarie learns how to be brave and courageous when she helps shelter her Jewish friend from the Nazis.

Description from The Reader's Catalog
Newbery Medal-winner for the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children

From the Publisher
Ten-year-old Annemarie Johansen and her best friend Ellen Rosen often think about life before the war. But it's now 1943 and their life in Copenhagen is filled with school, food shortages, and the Nazi soldiers marching in their town.

The Nazi won't stop. The Jews of Denmark are being "relocated," so Ellen moves in with the Johansens and pretends to be part of the family.

Then Annemarie is asked to go on a dangerous mission. Somehow she must find the strength and courage to save her best friend's life. There's no turning back now.

From the Critics
From Publisher's Weekly - Publishers Weekly  
Set in Nazi-occupied Denmark in 1943, this 1990 Newbery winner tells of a 10-year-old girl who undertakes a dangerous mission to save her best friend. Ages 10-14. (Sept.)
 
From Susie Wilde - Children's Literature  
This Newbery-award winning book is the story of a ten-year-old Danish girl who courageously helps to save the family of her Jewish friend. Lowry was inspired by the letter of a young Dane, who, on the eve of his execution, reminded young and old to remember and from that remembering "to create an ideal of human decency."
 
From School Library Journal  
Gr 3-7The gripping story of a ten-year-old Danish girl and her family's courageous efforts to smuggle Jews out of their Nazi-occupied homeland to safety in Sweden. Readers are taken to the very heart of Annemarie's experience, and, through her eyes, come to understand the true meaning of bravery. (Mar. 1989)
 
From Edith Milton - The New York Times Book Review  
Some of the details in 'Number the Stars' are very telling: the Germans' brutal search for hidden Jews, . . . the handkerchief treated with rabbit's blood and cocaine to put the guard dogs off their scent, the mutual pride between good King Christian and his people. . . . What the book fails to offer is any sense of the horror that is the alternative if the Johansens' efforts to save Ellen and her family fail. . . . The German occupation seems little more than an invasion of bad-tempered bores. . . . Annemarie is, after all, a Danish Christian citizen in good standing, and her innocent viewpoint keeps us at too great a distance to see clearly either the scale of the evil or the magnitude of the courage from which this story springs.

Lesson Plans

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