Lois Lowry - Number the Stars

Sandpiper

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Boston New York

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.

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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company,
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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, 19391945DenmarkJuvenile fiction. [1. World War,
19391945DenmarkFiction. 2. World War, 19391945Jews
RescueFiction. 3. FriendshipFiction. 4. DenmarkFiction.]
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

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

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 booksome 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 tenthe age of Annemarie in Number the Stars, and the approximate age of most of the book's readersis 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.

The Danish friend who originally told me the story of her childhood in Copenhagen in 1943, and who became the prototype for the fictional Annemarie, is an old woman now. So am I. We both love thinking of the children reading the story today, coming to it for the first time and realizing that once, for a brief time and in a small place, a group of prejudice-free people honored the humanity of others.

Lois Lowry

"I'll race you to the corner, Ellen!" Annemarie adjusted the thick leather pack on her back so that her schoolbooks balanced evenly. "Ready?" She looked at her best friend.

Ellen made a face. "No," she said, laughing. "You know I can't beat you -my legs aren't as long. Can't we just walk, like civilized people?" She was a stocky ten-year-old, unlike lanky Annemarie.

"We have to practice for the athletic meet on FridayI know I'm going to win the girls' race this week. I was second last week, but I've been practicing every day. Come on, Ellen," Annemarie pleaded, eyeing the distance to the next corner of the Copenhagen street. "Please?"

Ellen hesitated, then nodded and shifted her own rucksack of books against her shoulders. "Oh, all right. Ready," she said.

"Go!" shouted Annemarie, and the two girls were off, racing along the residential sidewalk. Annemarie's silvery blond hair flew behind her, and Ellen's dark pigtails bounced against her shoulders.

"Wait for me!" wailed little Kirsti, left behind, but the two older girls weren't listening.

Annemarie outdistanced her friend quickly, even though one of her shoes came untied as she sped along the street called sterbrogade, past the small shops and cafs of her neighborhood here in northeast Copenhagen. Laughing, she skirted an elderly lady in black who carried a shopping bag made of string. A young woman pushing a baby in a carriage moved aside to make way. The corner was just ahead.

Annemarie looked up, panting, just as she reached the corner. Her laughter stopped. Her heart seemed to skip a beat.

"Halte!" the soldier ordered in a stern voice.

The German word was as familiar as it was frightening. Annemarie had heard it often enough before, but it had never been directed at her until now.

Behind her, Ellen also slowed and stopped. Far back, little Kirsti was plodding along, her face in a pout because the girls hadn't waited for her.

Annemarie stared up. There were two of them. That meant two helmets, two sets of cold eyes glaring at her, and four tall shiny boots planted firmly on the sidewalk, blocking her path to home.

And it meant two rifles, gripped in the hands of the soldiers. She stared at the rifles first. Then, finally, she looked into the face of the soldier who had ordered her to halt.

"Why are you running?" the harsh voice asked. His Danish was very poor. Three years, Annemarie thought with contempt. Three years they've been in our country, and still they can't speak our language.