A Study Guide for Lois Lowry's "Number the Stars"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Lois Lowry's "Number the Stars," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jun 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535829748

Book preview

12

Number the Stars

Lois Lowry

1989

Introduction

Winner of the 1990 Newbery Award, Lois Lowry's Number the Stars is a young-adult historical novel inspired by the Danish resistance movement in World War II. After surrendering to Nazi Germany, the Danish people protected their Jewish population by smuggling Jewish families out of the country and into Sweden. Lowry's book centers on ten-year-old Annemarie Johansen and her best friend Ellen Rosen, who is Jewish. When the Johansen and Rosen families learn, through their contact in the Danish resistance movement, that the Nazis are beginning to relocate the Danish Jews, Ellen is sent to live with the Johansens. Mean-while, Ellen's parents escape, with the aid of resistance members, before the German officers can find them. Annemarie, Ellen, and Annemarie's little sister Kirsti flee with Mrs. Johansen to Annemarie's uncle's house by the sea.

Although the girls enjoy pretending they are sisters, as the dangerous situation requires, the gravity of the situation is not entirely lost on them. Before long, the resistance has delivered Ellen's parents and several other Jews to Uncle Henrik's home. From there, the Jews are escorted by Annemarie's mother to Henrik's fishing boat, where they plan to hide until Henrik takes them to Sweden the next morning. Annemarie waits anxiously for her mother's return. Near dawn, she finds her mother close to home, her ankle broken from her run through the dark woods. Mrs. Johansen is horrified to discover that an important packet that Ellen's father was to have delivered to Henrik had fallen from his pocket.

Annemarie sees the urgent need to deliver the packet and takes it upon herself to do so. Hiding the mysterious envelope in a basket under the food she ostensibly is delivering to her uncle, Annemarie begins her perilous journey. She is stopped by Nazi soldiers, who remove everything from the basket, even the envelope, which contains a handkerchief. The soldiers release her, and Annemarie completes her journey. Upon her uncle's return later that day, Annmarie learns that her friend and the other Jewish families made it safely to Sweden, and that the handkerchief was treated with a substance that prevented the Nazis' dogs from smelling the people hidden under the boards on the boat. The novel closes with the ending of the war and the Johansens anxiously awaiting the return of their friends, the Rosens.

Number the Stars was published in 1989 by Houghton Mifflin Books for Children.

Author Biography

Born on March 20, 1937, in Honolulu, to Robert E. Hammersberg and Katharine Landis Hammersberg, Lowry traveled extensively as a child because of her father's career as an army dentist. During World War II, she lived in Pennsylvania, and in the years following the war, her family lived in Japan. Later, she attended a private school in Brooklyn, New York. After completing two years at Brown University, Lowry left college in 1956 to marry Donald Grey Lowry. While her husband