A Review Of Lois Lowry's Number The Stars

Number the Stars: A Critique of Fiction Europe and the rest of the world were turned upside down during World War II and the German occupation. Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars, published in 1989 by Houghton Mifflin Company in Boston, focuses on the perspective of the people of Denmark at the beginnings of the Holocaust. Annemarie, a young Danish girl, discovers what it means to be brave when she finds herself and her family must come to the aid of a group of Jews fleeing German persecution, most notably her friend Ellen’s family. The fear precipitated by the German occupation of European territories was something that Americans could not fully understand until arguably much later in the war. Hitler’s Nazi soldiers invaded not only other countries, but also Germany itself. The terror that the invaded countries felt was something real and palpable. What it must have been like to see the

I believe almost every person can recall a time from their childhood in which they were spared the truth of something in an attempt to safeguard them. Trust then becomes the theme of the narrative. It is a lesson every parent wishes to impart to their child, and that is where the bridge between the intended audience and the true audience lies. The simple description and sentence structure Lowry employs, both attracts and makes the child reader comfortable, while the content and themes also echo sentiments and knowledge of both parents and adults alike. It can easily be argued that any book can be for anyone, but I think most people would agree that there is some content that is inappropriate for younger readers, whereas the opposite does not necessarily hold the same. But I will argue that this book has something for a reader of any age, and I will also argue that many parents would likely chose this award winner to read to their children and by extension become a reader