Number the stars by Lois Lowry

Number the stars by Lois Lowry (Houghton Mifflin Co., 1989)

ISBN 0 395 51060 0

17 chapters; 137 pages

Subjects: World War Two, Denmark, Sweden, Jews, Resistance, Occupation, courage, friendship, junior fiction (Year 6-8)

Synopsis

This is not a long book, but it is simply but powerfully told and won the Newbery Award. I am going to quote from the book jacket itself, because it provides the perfect intro:

“’How brave are you, little Annemarie?’ Uncle Henrik asks his ten-year-old niece. It is 1943, and to Annemarie Johansen, life in Copenhagen is a complicated mix of ordinary home and school life, food shortages, and the constant presence of Nazi soldiers. Bravery seems a vague virtue, one possessed by dragon-slaying knights in the bedtime stories she tells her younger sister, Kirsti. Too soon, she herself is called upon for courage.

As the German troops begin their campaign to "relocate" all the Jews of Denmark, the Johansens take in Annemarie's best friend, Ellen Rosen, and pretend she is part of the family. Ellen and Annemarie must think quickly when three Nazi officers arrive late one night and question why Ellen is not blond, like her sisters.

Through Annemarie's eyes, we see the Danish Resistance as they manage to smuggle almost the entire Jewish population, nearly 7000 people, across the sea to Sweden. In this tale of an entire nation's heroism, Lois Lowry reminds us that there is pride and human decency in the world even during a time of terror and war.”

Lois Lowry has written an Afterword in response to the question “How much of Annemarie’s story is true?”

Reviews:

There are lots of study guides available online. The  Scholastic page has extra teaching resources including extension guides and writing prompts.

The book also features on the prestigious Kirkus reviews which calls it a "deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards--not only for their king, who was in the habit of riding alone in Copenhagen, but for their Jews."

Questions:

Where does the title come from? (Hint: Look in the chapter titled “Let us open the casket”.) What do you think it means?

Author’s website

Lois Lowry’s website starts on a cheery, welcoming note: “Hi! I wish I could invite you into my kitchen for a cup of tea and we could chat. That's not possible. But please... join me here, at the website. It's the next best thing.”

It contains her biography with lots of family photos and interesting facts, FAQs, speeches, videos and even a quiz. Lois Lowry was born in Hawaii, went to school in America and Japan, got married at 19 and had four children. She writes that her older son was a fighter pilot in the US Air Force. “His death in the cockpit of a warplane left a little girl fatherless and tore away a piece of my world. But it left me, too, with a wish to honor him by joining the many others trying to find a way to end conflict on this very fragile earth.”

I also liked this paragraph:

“My books have varied in content and style. Yet it seems that all of them deal, essentially, with the same general theme: the importance of human connections. A summer to die, my first book, was a highly fictionalized retelling of the early death of my sister, and of the effect of such a loss on a family. Number the stars, set in a different culture and era, tells the same story: that of the role that we humans play in the lives of our fellow beings.”

Other books you might like:

Claire Huchet Bishop’s Twenty and ten, set in France, also shows how courage and friendship can help to save those whose lives are in danger, as does Hero on a bicycle by Shirley Hughes (set in Italy).

In I am David, Denmark is the country that David is told to head to. In my post on that book, I talk about how it isn't a WW2 story at all, but I still like the connection. 

Things I didn’t know
I didn't know anything about the Danish Resistance (Denmark surrendered to Germany in 1940).  I had no idea that over 7,000 Danish Jews - almost all of the country's Jewish population - were taken across to safety in Sweden.

I didn’t know about King Christian and loved the story of how he used to ride out on his horse every morning to greet his people, unguarded,  because “the whole of Denmark” was his bodyguard. In fact there is a picture book about him, The Yellow Star: The Legend of King Christian X of Denmark by Carmen Agra Deedy, which tells how he responded to the Nazi edict that all Jews must wear a yellow star by wearing a yellow star himself – however, this is apparently a blend of fact and legend, as no Danish Jews were ever “forced" to wear the yellow star.

But as the Holocaust Encyclopedia points out, “The legend conveys an important historical truth, however: both the King and the majority of the Danish people stood by their Jewish citizens and were instrumental in saving almost all of them from Nazi persecution and death.”

King Christian X of Denmark

Here is a picture of a Danish rescue boat, and a map showing how close Denmark is to Sweden. You can even see film footage of the German presence in Copenhagen.

Have you read it?

Have you read this book? Let me know what you think!

I am David by Anne Holm

I am David by Anne Holm, translated from the Danish by L.W. Kingsland (Puffin, 1969; first published in Denmark, 1963)

8 chapters; 153 pages

Subjects: Denmark, Italy, Eastern Europe, concentration camps, Cold War, dogs, fable, intermediate fiction (Year 6-8)

Synopsis

This entry might be a bit of a cheat, but it is included in all sincerity, even if under slightly false pretences. 

I am David made a strong impression on me when I read it as a child. It’s one of the many classic Puffin books discovered and published by their marvellous editor Kaye Webb.

Recently I re-read it in preparation for a workshop I was holding on Writing about war for children, and discovered that what I thought I knew about it was quite wrong. I thought it was a book about a Jewish boy escaping from a concentration camp in World War Two (a bit like The boy in the striped pyjamas, but with a happier ending.) Turns out that’s not true at all.

The clue is on pg 50 (in my edition). Because David has grown up in the camp, he has no idea about geography or anything else in the outside world, and he’s trying to work out which countries are safe. His definition of a safe country is one with a king or queen, and when he asks someone about England, the answer given is that “at the moment there was a queen because the last king had had no sons, only daughters.” So the book must be set after 1953 (when Queen Elizabeth came to the throne) and it’s an Eastern Europe / Cold War / Communism story, not a World War Two story at all.

Or is it? This article points out that David is 12 in the story, so it's possible that he could have been born during World War Two. 

There are some unlikely coincidences in the plot, especially towards the end, but I think this ambiguity is partly why it has stayed in my memory. It is quite a haunting book.

The book cover above is my own copy, but there are a number of other editions with different covers.

    

Reviews:

This review on The bookbag calls David "an introspective, deep child" who "observes constantly and learns quickly and ... has his own, strong sense of what is right and what is wrong." 

Another review on Reading matters comments that “the book is not set in a real time or place. Although the circumstances seem real enough, David's background is a synthesis of all the terrible persecution that happened during the Second World War and the subsequent years of cold war communism. This helps to make David a very powerful and pure figure. I don't think he is particularly real. Anne Holm uses him as a blank canvas on which can be drawn the first experiences of life - beauty, knowledge, trust, religion, love, everything.”

It’s a classic, there are masses of reviews and reading guides online. Don’t get bogged down in them. Just read the book for yourself.

About the author

For such a famous book, I couldn’t find much info on the author.

According to this obituary in the Independent, Anne Lise Elfe was born in Aal, Jutland, on 10 September 1922. She married Johan Holm in 1949 and they had one son. She died on 27 December 1998. 

The writer of the obituary describes the book as "a landmark in bringing to children's attention the existence of a world of political evil and the misery this causes. Some doubted the need for revealing such harsh truths at an early stage, but the thousands of children who read the book often sent letters of thanks to the author. Sometimes they wrote directly to the fictional David as well." 

I found this very interesting as it echoed the issues we were discussing in the workshop, to do with "how much” to tell children about war.

In the book, David himself says, “I am glad I told Maria that evil exists. I don’t want her to be afraid, but it’s something you have to know about. Can’t you understand that children have a right to know everything that’s true?”

Other books you might like:

The silver sword by Ian Serraillier (1956) is also about children wandering through post-war Europe, trying to reach a safe country (in this case, Switzerland), although these children do have each other and aren't as completely alone as David.  

Number the stars by Lois Lowry is set in Denmark (where David is told to head to) in World War Two and celebrates the bravery and compassion of the Danish people. 

Things I didn’t know

That this book which I loved as a child isn't about World War Two at all!