Number the Stars

 

Table of Contents

Title Page

Table of Contents

Copyright

Dedication

Introduction

1. Why Are You Running?

2. Who Is the Man Who Rides Past?

3. Where Is Mrs. Hirsch?

4. It Will Be a Long Night

5. Who Is the Dark-Haired One?

6. Is the Weather Good for Fishing?

7. The House by the Sea

8. There Has Been a Death

9. Why Are You Lying?

10. Let Us Open the Casket

11. Will We See You Again Soon, Peter?

12. Where Was Mama?

13. Run! As Fast As You Can!

14. On the Dark Path

15. My Dogs Smell Meat!

16. I Will Tell You Just a Little

17. All This Long Time

Afterword

About the Author

Look for these other books by Lois Lowry:

Copyright © 1989 by Lois Lowry

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Sandpiper,

an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

Originally published in hardcover in the United States by

Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, an imprint of Houghton

Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 1989.

SANDPIPER and the SANDPIPER logo are trademarks of

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book,

write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company,

215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

www.hmhbooks.com

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Lowry, Lois.

Number the stars / Lois Lowry.

p. cm.

Summary: In 1943, during the German occupation of Denmark, ten-year-old An-

nemarie learns how to be brave and courageous when she helps shelter her Jewish

friend from the Nazis.

1. World War, 1939–1945—Denmark—Juvenile fiction. [1. World War,

1939–1945—Denmark—Fiction. 2. World War, 1939–1945—Jews—

Rescue—Fiction. 3. Friendship—Fiction. 4. Denmark—Fiction.]

I. Title.

PZ7.L9673Nu 1989 88-37134

[Fic]—dc19 CIP

AC

ISBN: 978-0-395-51060-5 hardcover

ISBN: 978-0-547-57709-8 paperback

Manufactured in the United States of America

DOM 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For my friend Annelise Platt

Tusind tak

Introduction

It's hard to believe that I wrote Number the Stars more than twenty years ago. It seems like yesterday that I answered the phone on a snowy January morning and received the news that it had been awarded the 1990 Newbery Medal.

Most books published that long ago have faded into a pleasant, undisturbed retirement on dusty library shelves, or become an occasional topic for a research paper. But Number the Stars seems to have acquired its own long and vibrant life; not a day goes by that I don't hear from a passionate reader of the book—some of them parents who remember it from their childhood and are now reading it with their own children.

I think readers of every age match themselves against the protagonists of books they love. Would I have done that? they ask themselves as they follow a fictional character through a novel. What choice would I have made?

And ten—the age of Annemarie in Number the Stars, and the approximate age of most of the book's readers—is an age when young people are beginning to develop a strong set of personal ethics. They want to be honorable people. They want to do the right thing. And they are beginning to realize that the world they live in is a place where the right thing is often hard, sometimes dangerous, and frequently unpopular.

So they follow a story about a girl their age, caught in a frightening situation, who must make decisions. She could take the easy way out. She could turn her back on her friend. (As the readers of Number the Stars grow older and read other Holocaust literature, they'll find that many people in other countries, not Denmark, did just that). Young readers rejoice when Annemarie takes a deep breath, enters the woods, faces the danger, stands up to the enemy, and triumphs.

When the book was newly published, it found its way into the hands and hearts of children who had read about but never experienced war. Now, sadly, I have heard from young readers who have lost a parent or an older brother in Iraq or Afghanistan. We all know how easy it is, and how futile, to blame and to hate.

I think the history of Denmark has much to teach us all.

The book has been published in many countries now, translated into countless different languages from Hungarian to Hebrew. Everywhere children are still reading about the integrity that a small Scandinavian population showed almost seventy years ago. Books do change lives, I know; and many readers have told me that Number the Stars changed theirs when they were young, that it made them think about both cruelty and courage. "It was something that shaped my idea of how people should be treated," wrote a young woman recently, recalling her own fourth grade experience with the book.