Number the Stars

Lois Lowry

Historical fiction

First published: 1989
Print length: 137 pagesYearling Book, 2005

National Jewish Book Awards, 1990

Newbery Medal, 1990

Description

Ten-year-old Annemarie Johansen lives in Copenhagen in 1943, where German soldiers, shortages, and occupation have become part of daily life. When Denmark’s Jewish population is targeted, her friend Ellen must hide with the Johansen family and pose as Annemarie’s deceased sister during a search of their home. The adults’ evasions gradually reveal a larger effort to move Jewish families across the sea to safety in Sweden. A staged funeral shelters refugees awaiting passage, and Annemarie is eventually entrusted with carrying a Resistance packet past soldiers and trained dogs. Told through a child confronting dangers she only partly understands, the novel examines how courage can grow from friendship, quick thinking, and ordinary people’s decision to protect their neighbors.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Atmospheric · Direct · Spare

Pace

Brisk

Tone

Earnest · Hopeful · Suspenseful · Tense

Structure

Linear

Focus

Character · Plot · Relationships

Emotional intensity

4 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 2 / 5
Ideas: 2 / 5
Structure: 2 / 5
Background knowledge: 1 / 5

Themes

Coming of ageCommunityFamilyFriendshipOppressionSurvival

About Lois Lowry

Lois Lowry is an American writer for children and young adults whose fiction gives difficult moral questions clear, accessible narrative shapes. Her prose is usually direct and spare, and she often limits knowledge to a young protagonist, letting danger or injustice emerge through partial understanding. In The Giver, Jonas’s orderly community is disclosed rule by rule before transferred memories reveal what its stability has erased. That gradual widening of perception is characteristic of Lowry’s method. Ordinary routines become the means of exposing systems that control history, feeling, bodies, or belonging. Number the Stars brings the same restraint to occupied Copenhagen, keeping close to a ten-year-old who grasps the adults’ rescue work only in pieces as she is drawn into it. Lowry also writes intimate family realism. A Summer to Die uses Meg’s conversational first-person account to follow jealousy and affection as her sister’s illness alters domestic life. Whether working in dystopia, historical fiction, or family narrative, Lowry builds plots around young people learning how much their communities have concealed and deciding what responsibility that knowledge creates.

Gathering Blue Apple Books

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Yearling Book
Language: English
ISBN: 9780440403272

Keep your books and notes in Collected for iPhone.

Apple Books is a service mark of Apple Inc. iPhone is a trademark of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.