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Number the Stars

by Lois Lowry (Goodreads Author)

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Molly said: " Number the Stars by Lois Lowry. Historical Fiction genre. 5th-grade reading level.

This is an incredible story that is heart wrenching and tragic, yet extremely inspiring and motivational as well. Although a historical fiction genre, I felt that I h Number the Stars by Lois Lowry. Historical Fiction genre. 5th-grade reading level.

This is an incredible story that is heart wrenching and tragic, yet extremely inspiring and motivational as well. Although a historical fiction genre, I felt that I had stepped into the life of Ellen, the main character, Annemarie’s best friend, receiving a true depiction of what it was like to be a Danish Jew during the Holocaust. The author Lois Lowry provides thoughts and emotions Ellen experienced, along with the constant ongoing fear that her parents or herself could be dead at any minute. This evoked such a sense of injustice that it made you want to stand right there with the Johansen (Annemarie’s family) and resist the Nazis yourself. Your heart really goes out to Ellen, especially when the author depicts what a kind and lovely girl she was.
Like Annemarie, you may yourself develop a hero mentality or like Peter, you may want to start a resistance right there in Denmark to make sure people like Ellen are no longer in harm's way of the Nazis. As sad as it may be, this story gave us cheerful, strong, smart, determined, and brave characters that help us find some hope in the situation. These characters serve as truly inspiring and motivational leaders that make our own feelings of what is right stronger than before and even might make us become more determined and brave ourselves to take action on things we know are also unjust or not right. The whole time you read the story you are on the edge of your seat not knowing when the Nazis are going to discover the Johansen family’s secret.
Likewise, the characters are on the edge of their seat as well trying to hide Ellen Rose and sneak her to Sweden. This is a feeling that doesn’t really manifest itself in the story because the situation was so intense that each character even young Anne Marie had to present a brave exterior and mentality. Here in this story, we see Annemarie and Ellen, true best friends that love each other and would do anything for one another. Ellen Rose is an absolute sweetheart that would do anything for someone else, for example taking a friend's shoes to her father to paint black because her friend longed for black shoes. Annemarie, on the other hand, is a young firecracker that we learn later on as the story progresses isn’t too far from the apple tree, Mamma.
Like Mamma Annemarie is a person that is sharp as a tack, determined, brave, and willing to put her life or family’s life in harm's way to always, no matter what, do the right thing. These characters alone say a lot about an audience. They make us reflect on our own actions and who we are as a person and make us want to resemble a fraction of the strengths we see in them. Mr. Johansen, or Pappa, is the fighter and protector in the story. Likewise, to Peter, Mamma, Lise, and Annemarie he will do anything to fight for what is right. He also does anything to make sure that the ones he loves feel safe and is safe throughout, in which case he promised to Ellen Rose several times.
As you can see the characters are so strong and inspiring that clearly, this would be a high-quality book for your children. Hopefully, your students could learn and become inspired by the Johansen family like I was. Aside from high quality, this story is also multicultural in that the Holocaust is something that is known worldwide. If your students haven’t learned about it yet they will before long. Many countries all around the world were exposed to frightening and terrible acts from the Nazis and for that reason, this is a story that affects children from countries all over the world. With such strong characters, we see a lot of dialect from each character that makes us infer the characters actions, personality, thoughts, or logic for what they are doing.
This is a great opportunity for you, students, to take direct quotes from characters in the story and infer what their motives are why they act the way they do, how acting differently may change things, and what they think will happen next. As this is a 5th-grade reading level book students can answer questions like this during your read aloud or copies of this book can be offered to small groups and a chapter a day can be assigned to groups. You can ask your students a variety of these inference questions as they go along with each chapter dividing them up and having them present their question at the end of the week, as students would receive a week to read each chapter. Another idea is for you to read one chapter and have them answer inference questions orally and then the next week have them read the chapter and write down responses to those inference questions.

Standard :
RI5.1 - Quote accurately from a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text. ...more "

Oct 11, 2017 12:57PM · see review