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Number the Stars (Laurel Leaf Books) (Mass Market Paperback) (Paperback)
by Lois Lowry
| Category:
World War II, Award-winning, Story, Ages 9-12, Children's books |
| Market price: ¥ 88.00
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¥ 78.00
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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. |
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Author: Lois Lowry
Publisher: Laurel Leaf; Reprint edition
Pub. in: February, 1998
ISBN: 0440227534
Pages: 144
Measurements: 6.7 x 4.2 x 0.5 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BC00404
Other information: ISBN-13: 978-0440227533
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- Awards & Credential -
The winner of 1990 Newbery Medal. |
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- MSL Picks -
Number the Stars is a short novel that deals with World War II. The main characters in this selection are Annemarie Johansen and best friend Ellen Rosen who live in the invaded country of Denmark in time of 1943 when the Germans took control of the small defenseless country. Although the situation is based on an actual occurrence in history, the characters are completely fictional.
The main conflict in the story is when the Jews are being "relocated" by the Germans and the Rosen family must hide so the Johansens aid them on their later escape to the liberate nation of Sweden which was accepting refugees at the time. Young & innocent Annemarie must confront the obstacles that an adult would receive, not the one's that a child should. After much tribulation in aiding the Rosens on their getaway to Sweden, the Rosens make it safely to Sweden. The story continues until Denmark is finally liberated and Annemarie, along with all Danes, can finally welcome home their Jewish friends home.
As the above said that the majority of this book is based on actual storied and information on people who surpassed the ordeal of the German invasion. Denmark, in 1940 surrendered to Germany because the country was too small and had no relevantly effective army or methods of defense. So surely with great sorrow, King Christian surrendered, and overnight the soldiers moved in. The part of the chemicals in the napkin is also very much true. As soon as police dogs trying to leave Denmark were catching Jews, Swedish scientists came up with a formula to prevent such detection. This formula consisted of rabbit's blood and cocaine; the blood attracted the dogs and the cocaine numbed its senses. Almost every sailor that was aiding the Jews had one of these useful devices that saved many lives. Some of the characters in the story, on the other hand, perhaps shared incident that real people experienced as well. This is story can be considered Historical Fiction.
Target readers:
Kids aged up 8
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LOIS LOWRY is the author of the popular Anastasia Krupnik books and was the recipient of the Newbery Medal for Number the Stars and for The Giver. She lives in Cambridge, MA.
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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.
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"I'll race you to the corner, Ellen!" Annemarie adjusted the thick leather pack on her back so that her school books balanced evenly. "Ready?" She looked at her best friend.
Ellen made a face. "No," she said, laughing. "You know I can't beat you-my legs aren't as long. Can't we just walk, like civilized people?" She was a stocky ten year-old, unlike lanky Annemarie.
"We have to practice for the athletic meet on Friday- I know I'm going to win the girls' race this week. I was second last week, but I've been practicing every day. Come on, Ellen," Annmarie pleaded, eyeing the distance to the next corner of the Copenhagen street. "Please?"
Ellen hesitated, then nodded and shifted her own rucksack of books against her shoulders. "Oh, all right. Ready," she said.
"Go!" shouted Annemarie, and the two girls were off, racing along the residential sidewalk. Annemarie's silvery blond hair flew behind her, and Ellen's dark pigtails bounced against her shoulders.
"Wait for me!" wailed little Kirsti, left behind, but the two older girls weren't listening.
Annemarie outdistanced her friend quickly, even though one of her shoes came untied as she sped along the street called osterbrograde, past the small shops and cafés of her neighborhood here in northeast Copenhagen. Laughing, she skirted an elderly lady in black who carried a shopping bag made of string. A young woman pushing a baby in a carriage moved aside to make way. The corner was just ahead.
Annemarie looked up, panting, just as she reached the corner. Her laughter stopped. Her heart seemed to skip a beat.
"Halte!" the solider ordered in a stern voice. The German word was familiar as it was frightening. Annemarie had heard it often enough before, but it had never been directed at her until now.
Behind her, Ellen also slowed and stopped. Far back, Kirsti was plodding along, her face in a pout cause the girls hadn’t waited for her.
Annemarie stared up. There was two of them. That meant two helmets, two sets of cold eyes glaring at her, and four shiny boots planted firmly on the sidewalk, blocking her path home.
And it meant two rifles, gripped in the hands of the soldiers. She stared at the rifles first. Then, finally, she looked into the face of the soldier who had ordered her to halt.
"Why are you running?" the harsh voice asked. His Danish was very poor. Three years, Annemarie thought with contempt. Three years they've been in our country, and still they can't speak our language.
"I was racing my friend," she answered politely. "We have races at school every Friday, and I want to do well, so I —" Her voice trailed away, the sentence unfinished. Don’t talk so much, she told herself. Just answer them, that's all.
She glanced back. Ellen was motionless on the sidewalk, a few yards behind her. Farther back, Kirsti was still sulking, and walking slowly toward the corner. Nearby, a woman had come to the doorway of a shop and was standing silently, watching.
One of the soldiers, the taller one, moved toward her. Annemarie recognized him as the one she and Ellen always called, in whispers, "the Giraffe" because of his height and the long neck that extended from his stiff collar. He and his partner were always on this corner.
He prodded the corner of her backpack with the stock of his rifle. Annemarie trembled. "What is in here?" he asked loudly. From the corner of her eye, she saw the shopkeeper move quietly back into the shadows of the doorway, out of sight.
"Schoolbooks," she answered truthfully.
"Are you a good student?" the soldier asked. He seemed to be sneering.
"Yes."
"What is your name?"
"Annemarie Johanson."
"Your friend is she a good student, too?" He was looking beyond her, at Ellen, who hadn't moved.
Annemarie looked back, too, and saw that Ellen's face, usually rosy-cheecked, was pale, and her dark eyes were wide.
She nodded at the soldier. "Better than me," she said.
"What is her name?"
"Ellen."
"And who is this?" he asked, looking to Annemarie's side. Kirsti had appeared there suddenly, scowling at everyone.
"My little sister." She reached down for Kirsti's hand, but Kirsti, always stubborn, refused it and put her hands on her hips defiantly.
The soldier reached down and stroked her little sister's short, tangled curls. Stand still, Kirsti, Annemarie ordered silently, praying that somehow the obstinate five-year-old would receive the message.
But Kirsti reached up and pushed the soldier's hand away. "Don't," she said loudly.
Both soldiers began to laugh. They spoke to each other in rapid German that Annemarie couldn't understand.
"She is pretty, like my own little girl," the tall one said in a more pleasant voice.
Annemarie tried to smile politely.
"Go home, all of you. Go study your schoolbooks. And don't run. You look like hoodlums when you run."
The two soldiers turned away. Quickly Annemarie reached down again and grabbed her sister's hand before Kirsti could resist. Hurrying the little girl along, she rounded the corner. In a moment Ellen was beside her. They walked quickly not speaking with Kirsti between them, toward the large apartment building where both families lived.
When they were almost home, Ellen whispered suddenly, "I was so scared."
"Me too," Annemarie whispered back.
As they turned to enter their building, both girls looked straight ahead, toward the door. They did it purposely so that they would not catch the eyes or the attention of two more soldiers, who stood with their guns on this corner as well. Kirsti scurried ahead of them through the door, chattering about the picture she was bringing home from kindergarten to show Mama. For Kirsti, the soldiers were simply part of the landscape, something that had always been there, on every corner, as unimportant as lampposts, throughout her remembered life.
"Are you going to tell your mother?" Ellen asked Annemarie as they trudged together up the stairs. "I'm not. My mother would be upset."
"No, I won't, tell either. Mama would probably scold me for running on the street."
She said goodbye to Ellen on the second floor, where Ellen lived, and continued to the third, practicing in her mind a cheerful greeting for her mother; a smile, a description of today’s spelling test, in which she had done well.
But she was too late. Kirsti had gotten there first. "and he poked Annemarie's book bag with his gun, and then he grabbed my hair!" Kirsti was chattering as she took off her sweater in the center of the apartment living room. "But I wasn't scared. Annemarie was, and Ellen, too. But not me!"
Mrs. Johansen rose quickly from the chair by the window where she'd been sitting. Mrs. Rosen, Ellen's mother, was there, too, in the opposite chair. They'd been having coffee together, as they did many afternoons. Of course it wasn't really coffee, though the mothers still called it that; "having coffee." There had been no real coffee in Copenhagen since the beginning of the Nazi occupation. Not even any real tea. The mothers sipped at hot water flavored with herbs.
"Annemarie, what happened? What is Kirsti talking about?" her mother asked anxiously.
"Where's Ellen?" Mrs. Rosen had a frightened look.
"Ellen's in your apartment. She didn’t realize you were here," Annemarie explained. "Don't worry. It wasn’t anything. It was the two soldiers who stand on Osterbrogade–you’ve seen them; you know the tall one with the long neck, the one who looks like a silly giraffe?" She told her mother and Mrs. Rosen of the incident, trying to make it sound humorous and unimportant. But their uneasy looks didn't change.
"I slapped his hand and shouted at him," Kirsti announced importantly.
"No, she didn't, Mama," Annemarie reassured her mother. "She's exaggerating, as she always does."
Mrs. Johansen moved to the window and looked down to the street below. The Copenhagen neighborhood was quiet; it looked the same as always: people coming and going from the shops, children at play, the soldiers on the corner.
She spoke in a low voice to Ellen's mother. "They must be edgy because of the latest Resistance incidents. Did you read in De Frie Danske about the bombings in Hillerod and Norrebro?"
Although she pretended to be absorbed in unpacking her schoolbooks, Annemarie listened, and she knew what her mother was referring to. De Frie Danske-The Free Danes- was an illegal newspaper; Peter Neilson brought it to them occasionally, carefully folded and hidden among ordinary books and papers, and Mama always burned it after she and Papa had read it. But Annemarie heard mama and Papa talk, sometimes at night, about the news they received that way: news of sabotage against the Nazis, bombs hidden and exploded in the factories that produced war materials, and industrial railroad lines damaged so that goods couldn't be transported.
And she knew what Resistance meant. Papa had explained, when she overheard the word and asked. The Resistance fighters where Danish people-no one knew who, because they were very secret-who were determined to bring harm to the Nazis however they could. They damaged the German trucks and cars, and bombed their factories. They were very brave. Sometimes they were caught and killed.
"I must go and speak to Ellen"....
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| View all 9 comments |
J. Wilson (MSL quote), USA
<2007-03-15 00:00>
This novel is by the same author, Lois Lowery, who also wrote the award winning novel, The Giver. This novel is no exception to the amazing work that Lowery is so famous for!
Number the Stars (as the summary states above) is about the adventures of a young girl named Annemarie. Young adult readers (who this novel was written for) will strongly connect with her thoughts, feelings, and emotions. The story will give children the chance to learn a little bit about something (concentration camps, and the Nazi's) that they probably knew nothing of before.
The content of the novel is appropriate for any young adult. The vocabulary is simple, and the writing is easy for the reader to connect with. As a parent or an educator, you have nothing to worry about when it comes to a child reading this book.
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Fippy (MSL quote), USA
<2007-03-15 00:00>
Even though I first read this book some years ago, and even though I've read far more gruesome and depressing books on the Holocaust during the last couple of years, Number the Stars still remains one of my favorite books ever on the subject.
It's very clear and simple to read, very accurate, a page-turner, and, most importantly, it makes you think!
Personally, I loved every single one of the characters and couldn't find a major flaw in any of them - they were all very well developed, with firm personalities, strengths, and weaknesses. Lois Lowry certainly dedicated quite a bit of time to making her characters seem as realistic as possible. My personal favorite character is Kirsty, Annemarie's (the main character) little, innocent, and at times, naive, sister.
The setting descriptions were also very good. You could feel the tension when there needed to be tension, and you could just picture the Danish countryside in your mind after you had read a paragraph dedicated to it.
The most important thing of all, however, was the plot, and it was great: basically, Annemarie is asked to go on a very perilous task to save her Jewish friend, Ellen, from the Nazis. Lowry described every action and every move perfectly. I really like it how there's a lot of (obvious) symbolism in this book, too.
All in all, this is a truly fantastic book, and I recommend everyone that's interested in the Holocaust (or maybe not so interested - yet), young and old, to read it. This is definitely a book for all ages!
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-03-15 00:00>
Number the Stars should be on every book shelf of the schools in America and other International Countries. AnneMarie's fight through the terrorizing Nazi regime in Copenhagen during Hitler's Era is a major part of American History, that every child should be informed of. If any child has gone past the age of twelve without reading this book, I reccomend they read it. It is a book that is hard to put down, and you will spend hours currled up on the sofa reading it. I read this book for a school assignment in the fifth grade, and saw it as an American Classic. Ms. Lowry outdid herself with this one, in my opinion.
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A kid (MSL quote), USA
<2007-03-15 00:00>
During the 1940's there was a time when the Germans wanted to get rid of the Jewish people. It was called The Holocaust. The Nazis, who were German, went looking for the Jews. This is the historical past in which Number the stars is written.
Two inseparable best friends, Ellen and Annemarie, are never seen apart. They were racing down the street when two German soldiers suddenly stopped them. Soon after, some Nazis break into Ellen's house to see if Annemarie is there. They wanted to take Annemarie away because she is Jewish.
As the reader lives with Ellen and Annemarie, he will find out that there is more to Annemarie than just being Jewish. The theme of the book is the friendship that will last a lifetime, knowing that one person will be with you during your ups and downs.
I was motivated to start reading Number the Stars because the title reminded me of all those people who have gotten hurt because of their nationality. Lois Lowry helps the reader understand how hard it was for Jews to hide or get away from the Germans during this harsh time. It is an easy read and I would recommend it to anyone who likes historical fiction.
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