Lowry, Lois. (1990). Number the Stars. New York: Bantam Double Day Dell Publishing Group, Inc. 137 pp.

Grade Range: Grades 6-9

Genre: historical fiction

Summary and Critique

In 1943 Denmark, the Nazis began "relocating" the Jewish citizens to concentration camps. Annemarie Johannesen and her family allow her best friend, Ellen Rosen, to live with them until they can help her escape to Sweden; however, Annemarie must jeopardize her safety and risk her own life in order to save Ellen's life. In this Newbery Award winner, Lowry addresses the themes of helping those in need and of not judging others. This historical fiction is a wonderful account of how the Danish people saved many of their Jewish citizens from the concentration camps. It is also an amazing story about how a ten-year old girl, Annemarie, can have courage and make a difference in the lives of many.

Number the Stars is historical fiction based on one of Lois Lowry's (Danish)

friend's true account of the German occupation of Denmark. It is praised for (1) its ability to express to younger readers the seriousness of the Holocaust without including the horror and the tragedy, (2) its attention to many historical details, and (3) the meaningful friendship that Annemarie and Ellen share.

Awards

Newbery Award Winner, 1990

School Library Journal Best Book of the Year

American Bookseller Pick of the Lists

American Library Association Notable Book

National Jewish Book Award

Sidney Taylor Award

Themes/Topics

The Holocaust

The Individual vs. Society

War and Peace

Adventure

Race, Ethnicity, and Culture

Families

Friends and Enemies

Challenges and Triumphs

Author Information

Born in 1937, Lowry lived in various places nationally and abroad because her father was in the military. She attended Brown University, but graduated from the University of Southern Maine. She has received two Newbery Medals: one for Number the Stars and one for The Giver.

For more information on Lois Lowry:

http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/special/kay/lowry.html

http://www.loislowry.com Web site offers information about Lois Lowry. (e.g., biographical information, book titles, speeches, and FAQ's)

Media Connections

Movies

The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) Film adaptation of Anne Frank's diary while she, her family, and their friends hid in a secret room during part of World War II.

Auschwitz: The Final Witnesses (2000) Documentary about Auschwitz.

The Wave (1981) Film adaptation of the book, based on a true story, of history teacher Burt Ross's experiment called the Wave, where he attempts to demonstrate for his students the negative consequences of peer pressure and the relevance of fascism in their lives.

Europa! Europa! (1991) A nonfiction account of Solomon Perel, a Jewish boy who survives the war by working as a Russian interpreter for the Germans.

Schindler's List (1993) Based on the true story of Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who saves the lives on over 1000 Jews during the Holocaust.

Pay It Forward (2000)-Trevor, a seventh grader, is given an assignment to do his part to improve the world. The adolescent decides he will help three people who, he hopes, will in turn help three more people. In the end, Trevor completes his assignment by stepping in to protect one of his schoolmates during a fight. Trevor, despite his efforts to improve the world, is stabbed with a knife; he risks, and ultimately loses, his life to help a person in need.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002)-Toula is thirty years old and the only unwed daughter in a large, traditional Greek family until she falls in love with, Ian, a handsome and exciting man. However, Ian is not Greek, and according to Toula's family, Greeks only marry Greeks! Toula must convince her family to overcome their preconceived ideas about marriage and to accept Ian as she does.

The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of The Ring (2001) Middle Earth is in danger as a result of an evil power that is instilled within a ring. To prevent certain disaster, Frodo, a young hobbit, must return the ring to where it was forged, and destroy it. However, he is not alone in his quest. Members from all walks of life (elves, dwarfs, humans, wizards, hobbits, etc.) support Frodo throughout his journey. The members of The Fellowship of The Ring, as they are called, realize they must put aside their differences and work together to save their homes. The movie illustrates the power of friendship and respect.

The Devil's Arithmetic (1999) Hannah, a modern teenager, is reluctant to accept Jewish traditions. However, when she opens up a door as part of the Seder feast, the adolescent finds herself a prisoner in an extermination camp and must experience the history of the Holocaust firsthand.

The Last Days (1998) In 1944, Hitler killed 425,000 Jews over a span of sixty days during his"cleansing of Hungary." In this documentary, several victims who survived this experience tell their stories.

Television

Roswell (any episode) A group of aliens, who look like humans, live what one would consider a fairly normal life on earth. One day, however, Max, an alien, uses his special powers to save the life of Liz, a girl who he is falling in love with. Once Liz knows Max's secret, she must risk her life to make sure the government does not capture Max and his friends to make them objects of study.

Music

"Measure of a Man." Performed by Clay Aiken. Measure of a Man. RCA Records, 2003. (The lyrics question how one might determine worth in a person.)

On-line Resources

http://www.annefrank.com The Anne Frank Center, USA website. This site is a tribute to Anne Frank. It discusses the life and times of Anne Frank, recent media connections and the Anne Frank Awards. It contains curriculum guides for teachers who are interested in teaching Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl and/or the story of the Holocaust.

http://www.ushmm.org/ The United States Holocaust Museum. This is a fascinating web-site that contains information about the museum, recent research and tools for educators and students. A specific link for educators, allows you to download a manual on teaching the Holocaust --http://www.ushmm.org/education/foreducators/.

http://www.wiesenthal.org The Simon Wiesenthal Center. Great website! This site contains factual information about the Holocaust, updated and on-going efforts to retrieve lost possessions and money of Holocaust victims, and a specific link to their multimedia learning center http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/.

http://www.Holocaust-trc.org/ (Holocaust Teacher Resource Center) This site provides lesson ideas and movie clips about the Holocaust for teachers of all grade levels. Furthermore, there is a compilation of essays written about the Holocaust, as well as information on conference seminars and short training courses for those who are interested in teaching the subject.

http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/ (A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust) This site provides resources for teachers as well as various student activities. Also, it presents an overview of the people and events of the Holocaust along with pictures, documents, film clips, and literature.

http://www.persecution.net/index.html (The Voice of the Martyrs) This site explores religious persecution all over the world, as well as listing information about events and different resources dealing with religious persecution.

http://education.indiana.edu/cas/tt/ttarticles.html (Teacher Talk) This site, published for pre-service and secondary school teachers, explores a variety of topics associated with educating adolescent students.

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/railroad/ (National Geographic Online presents The Underground Railroad) The Underground Railroad is an interactive site where one can learn about slavery and the underground railroad by experiencing it with Harriet Tubman and other famous faces from this era. The contents of this site parallel with the plot of Number The Stars in that the slaves fled to Canada from the United States in search of freedom as the Rosens fled from Denmark to Sweden to be free from religious persecution.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/holocaust/timeline/ (Timeline of America's Reaction to the Holocaust) This site offers a timeline which maps the history of the Holocaust from 1933-1945.

Related Texts

Aaron, Chester. (1982). Gideon: a Novel. New York: Lipincott. 181pp. Gideon is a teenage boy living in the Warsaw ghetto during World War II.

Wiesenthal, Simon. (1998). The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness. New York: Schocken Books. 288 pp. While imprisoned in a concentration camp, Wiesenthal is asked to forgive a dying Nazi soldier on behalf of all Jewish people.

Yolen, Jane. (1988). The Devil's Arithmetic. New York: Penguin Group. 170 pp. A Jewish girl is transported back in time to a concentration camp.

Bachrach, Susan D. (1994). Tell Them We Remember: The Story of the Holocaust. Boston: Little, Brown. 109pp. Pictorial exploration of various aspects of the Holocaust. Contains pictures of many artifacts from the United States National Holocaust Museum.

Frank, Anne. (1958). The Diary of a Young Girl. New York: Globe Books. 323 pp. While in hiding during part of World War II, Anne Frank kept a diary.

Reiss, Johanna. (1972). The Upstairs Room. New York: Crowell. 196pp. True story of a survivor, who, like Anne Frank, had to hide during World War II.

Schiff, Hilda, comp. (1995). Holocaust Poetry. New York: St. Martin's Griffin. 234 pp. Collection of poetry about the Holocaust.

Volavkova, Hana. (1994). I Never Saw Another Butterfly: Children's Drawings and Poems from Terezin Concentration Camp 1942-1944. Schocken Books. 128pp. A collection of poems and pictures created by the young inmates in the Terezin Concentration Camp.

Spinelli, Jerry. (1990). Maniac Magee. Boston: Little, Brown. 184 pp. Jeffrey Magee is an orphan who lives with his aunt and uncle (who have a bad marriage and barely speak to one another). The young man runs away from this frustrating lifestyle to a town nearly two hundred miles away. This town, Two Mills, is divided by race. However, as Magee searches for a place to belong, he manages to unite some of the citizens by forcing them to get to know one another. Whereas Number The Stars deals with religious animosity, Spinelli's book deals with the issue of race.

Lowry, Lois. (1993). The Giver. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 180pp. Jonas lives in a perfect society where there is no evil and everyone is given a life's assignment based on his or her emotional, physical, and mental capabilities. Jonas becomes"The Receiver of Memory," the most significant job in this society. As such, he is responsible for all of the memories of history because the citizens of the town do not want to deal with them. Jonas must listen to each of the citizens'proposals and direct them in their decisions based on what has happened in history. In doing so, he learns about issues in real life such as hate and war (things that do not appear in his"perfect" society). The young man must inform his fellow citizens so that they do not make decisions that have in the past brought tragedy and regret. This novel would be useful in studying the Holocaust because one could ask his or her students what Jonas might say to someone whose proposal foreshadowed another Holocaust.

Paterson, Katherine. Bridge To Terabithia. Harper Collins, 1977. Leslie Burke and her family, who move into Jesse Aaron's neighborhood, are thought to be unusual. Jesse, however, befriends Leslie and the two decide to create Terabithia, a place where they can be friends without having to deal with the forces that are bringing them down in their lives. Leslie changes Jesse's life for the better and helps him gather the strength to overcome an unexpected tragedy. In short, this book deals with the power of friendship.

Jiménez, Francisco. (1997). The Circuit. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico. 134 pp. Jiménez describes his childhood growing up in a family of migrant workers who crossed the United States border illegally from Mexico. He shares the disappointments and the heartbreaks of his unusual childhood up until the moment when he finally believes he has found his place. However, Border Patrol takes Jiménez away before he is able to prove his accomplishments. This book deals with a family who moves away from their home to provide a better life for themselves. This move parallels the move that the Rosens were forced to make in Number The Stars.

Konigsburg, E.L. (1996). View From Saturday. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers. 163 pp. Four students from very different backgrounds are chosen by their teacher, Mrs. Olinski (who was badly injured in an automobile accident) to represent the sixth grade in an Academic Bowl. The students and their teacher, despite their many differences, work, learn, grow, and succeed as a team.

Gallo, Donald R. (1993). Join In: Multiethnic Short Stories By Outstanding Writers for Young Adults. New York: Delacorte. 256 pp. This book contains stories about ethnically diverse adolescents trying to succeed in their American experiences.

Harth, Erica. (2001). Last Witnesses: Reflections on the Wartime Internment of Japanese Americans. New York: Palgrave for St. Martin's Press. 303 pp. In this book, novelists, memoirists, poets, activists, scholars, students, and professionals retell the story of Japanese internment during World War II in an effort to encourage the awareness of their readers.

Teaching Ideas

(1) "Butterfly Activity" Purpose: To help students understand the disastrous scope of the Holocaust and what could have happened to Ellen Rosen and her family had they been "relocated". Give each student a pattern of a butterfly. Let the students decorate the butterflies and then hang them from the ceiling. Each

student will then choose a poem written from a child in the book, I Never Saw Another Butterfly. Each student will then read the poem that they have

selected. When they are finished, they will tell the class whether or not their child survived the concentration camp. If their child died, they will

cut down their butterfly from the ceiling. By the end of the lesson only a few butterflies should remain.

[Summarized/adapted from the "Butterfly Project" from the Middle School Curriculum Trunk from the National Holocaust Museum Houston at http://www.hmh.org/ed_mid_school.asp.]

(2) "Ellen's Diary" Ask the students to write a series of diary entries from Ellen Rosen's perspective. The entries could include her perspective of hiding

with the Johansens, being smuggled in the boat or her life in Sweden until the end of the war. In order to have a better understanding of Ellen's

perspective, students should conduct further research using the resources mentioned above (or others) about young adults and children who hid from the

Nazis during the Holocaust.

(3) "Prejudice in the News" Many students think that the hatred and prejudice that created the Holocaust is obsolete. To raise awareness, ask the students to bring in newspaper articles or other evidence of existing prejudice or racism. Open a class discussion where the students share their thoughts and experiences. Brainstorm ways in which these prejudices can be stopped.

[Summarized/adapted from a lesson in Adolescent Literature as a Complement to the Classics. Edited by Joan Kaywell, (1993). Norwood, MA: Christopher Gordon Publishers, pp. 13-35.]

(4) "A Story Quilt" Have each student, on a sheet of construction paper, represent an aspect of Lois Lowry's Number The Stars. Students may choose to create and then describe an illustration, analyze a character, write a poem, or compare scenes in the novel to what they have learned in class about the Holocaust. Once they are finished, students will punch a hole in all four corners of their construction paper and then connect their squares with pieces of yarn to create a quilt representative of the one that Annemarie hid Ellen's necklace in.

[Adapted from "How to Quilt a Narrative—A New Form for Book Reports" by Rose Reissman in Classroom Notes Plus. Urbana, Il: National Council of Teachers of English. October 1996, pp. 8-9.] In Reissman's classroom, however, she assigns each student to craft an actual quilt that represents the book he or she has read. Students share their quilts with the class and explain how each serves as an appropriate book report.

(5) "Ordinary Heroes" The teacher will provide a handout for the students with quotes about heroism from Number The Stars. The students will then divide into teams of three and react to the quotes as well as create definitions for the terms: "hero" and"ordinary hero." After creating their definitions, the students discuss what they think separates heroes from ordinary heroes. Usually, the students will decide that heroes do selfless good deeds and do not expect rewards for them, while ordinary heroes usually appear at the spur of the moment to help but are not always successful. Afterward, the students are encouraged to think about the ordinary heroes they know and are then assigned to locate stories about ordinary heroes in different newspapers. What they will find from this assignment is that there are very few stories related to this topic. From this point, the class will organize an Ordinary Hero Hall of Fame to counteract the lack of its coverage in the media. Students will nominate heroes and then submit essays explaining why their nominee should be included in The Ordinary Hero Hall of Fame. These nominees are given a reception either at the school or at their home by a panel of students as well as the person who submitted the nomination.

[Adapted from "In Search of Ordinary Heroes: A Project Inspired by Miep Gies" by Rose Reissman in Classroom Notes Plus. Urbana, Il: National Council of Teachers of English. October 1998, pp. 12-4.] In Reissman's lesson, however, she use quotes from the novel Anne Frank Remembered by Miep Gies (Simon and Schuster, 1987), and focuses her lesson on Gies'heroism, rather than the heroism of the characters in Lowry's novel.

(6) "Tying Characters Together" Have each student draw the name of a character from a bag two or three days before the actual activity. Ask the students to become familiar with their characters by skimming the novel and talking about them with other students. On the day of the activity, the students will wear large tags with their characters'names on them. The students form a circle and the protagonist will be given a ball of twine. Holding one end, he or she chooses a character, explains his or her relationship to that character, and then throws the ball to that character. The student who catches the protagonist's ball of twine holds onto the string and tosses the ball to a third student, again explaining the relationship between their characters. This pattern continues and, gradually, a web of relationships is formed. Later, towards the end of class, ask various characters to pull their strings (students will feel great tension if a primary character is asked to pull the string and little tension if the character is only a minor one). However, it is important that students do not immediately throw the ball of twine back to the person who throws it to them; the twine should first connect another character to the web.

[Summarized from "Tying It All Together" by John Cebula in Classroom Notes Plus. Urbana, Il: National Council of Teachers of English. October 1993, p.3.]

(Review written by Kerry L. Galea, Stephanie Lee, and Jennifer E. Moore and edited by Jennifer E. Moore)