Book Review: Number the Stars

I asked my husband what his favorite book was back when we first started dating. He wasn’t, and isn’t, a huge reader but he told me that Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars was good. At the very least, it had to be memorable for a nonreader to name.
It’s nearly six years later and I’ve finally sought out and read Number the Stars. The book follows a young girl named Annemarie who lives in Copenhagen during the 1943 German occupation of Denmark. Annemarie ultimately helps the Danish Resistance smuggle Jewish people — including one of her friends — from Denmark to Sweden. The characters are made up, but key pieces of the plot are based on true events. Lowry even writes a concise “Afterward” following the story’s end to clarify which pieces are fact and fiction in the book.
As I read through this title, I wondered how I did not pick up this book sooner. How did I even make it through elementary school without reading it? It’s written very accessibly for children and utilizes true facts to create a serious historical fiction with some fun moments. For example, there is a very cute kitten who appears and is quickly named Thor. Yes, as in the God of Thunder.
I keep hoping that books like Number the Stars are circulating in schools. And further, that books like this are being utilized for curriculum. However, it scares me that I met several parents who do not want their children to learn about the Holocaust (or genocide generally). One parent even said there was already “too much negativity” in the limelight.
Negativity? Is that what we are calling tragedy now?
Whether we guard it or not, it seems the truth makes its way out regardless. Number the Stars might be an ideal way to start a conversation out in the open.
