Lois Lowry and Number the Stars Background

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Lois Lowry was born in 1937 in Honolulu, Hawaii. Because her father was a career army
officer, Lowry moved around as a child. She lived in several different countries including
Japan. She attended Brown University, where she was a writing major, but left college
before graduation to get married. Lowry's marriage did not last, but she had four children
who became inspirational in her work. She finished her college degree at the University of
Maine and worked as a housekeeper to earn a living. She continued to write, however,
filled with ideas by the adventures of her children. In addition to working on young adult
novels, Lowry also wrote textbooks and worked as a photographer specializing in
children's portraits.

For her first novel, A Summer to Die, Lowry received the International Reading
Association Children's Book Award in 1978. The novel tells the story of a thirteen-year-old
girl's complex feelings toward her older sister, who is dying. Lowry has said that she does
not like to include directly autobiographical information in her books, but it is possible that
some of Lowry's experience seeped into A Summer to Die, for Lowry's own sister died of
cancer.

Number the Stars is one of more than twenty young adult novels Lowry has written.
Lowry is the author of the popular Anastasia series. Lowry has been awarded numerous
book awards. In 1990, Number the Stars won the Newbery Medal and the National
Jewish Book Award. More recently, Lowry has received praise for her novel The Giver,
written in 1993. Lois Lowry's interest in the German occupation of Denmark during the
Second World War was piqued by a friend's stories. Annelise Platt, to whom Number the
Stars is dedicated, experienced many of the events which occur in the novel. Apparently
a great and willing storyteller, Platt described the privations and trial that she and her
family went through during the years of the war. She also told Lowry of the great devotion
of the Danes to their king and country. As Lowry says in the Afterword to Number the
Stars, Annemarie Johansen is a fictional little girl, but she grew out of the stories of
Annelise Platt's own childhood.

Though events of Number the Stars are based in actual historical fact, the specific story is
Lowry's own mixture of fiction, oral histories, and research. The novel takes place in
Denmark in 1943, three years after the Germans invaded Denmark. King Christian X was
the Danish king from 1912 to 1947. He had a cold and indifferent attitude towards the
Nazis and was unwilling to recognize their public presence. The King's attitude the
attitude of the Danish people toward their invaders. One of the unique aspects of the
German occupation of Denmark was that the monarchy was left intact. Other concessions
were also made to the Danes, largely because they provided food and transportation for
Hitler's army. However, these concessions did not erase the offense of the occupation,
and a resistance movement gathered force in 1942 and was mobilized in 1943. The
greatest accomplishment of the Danish Resistance was the mass rescue of Danish Jews
in October of 1943.

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Although King Christian is the only purely historical figure in Number the Stars, Lowry
based several of her characters on real people. Peter Neilsen was directly inspired by the
life of a young man who was part of the Danish Resistance. Lowry explains in her
Afterword that she encountered the name Kim Malthe-Brunn while reading about the
Resistance leaders of Denmark. She was struck by his story and by the youthfulness of a
picture that accompanied the text. Like the fictional Peter, Malthe-Brunn was very young
and extraordinarily committed to his beliefs. In the Afterword of Number the Stars, Lowry
includes an excerpt from a letter that Malthe-Brunn wrote to his family from a German
prison on the night before he died. In the novel, Peter, who dies in the same way Malthe-
Brunn died, also sends a letter from prison to the Johansens.

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Number the Stars
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The Difficulty of Growing Up

The central theme of Number the Stars is the difficulty of growing up. One could make the
case that Lowry uses the context of World War II as a way of making these difficulties
stand out clearly. The novel focuses on Annemarie Johansen's personal experiences with
growing up, but her experiences are common to most young people. Growing up is
presented as a struggle for identity. Does Annemarie belong to the world of adults or to
the world of children? Such distinctions are always difficult to make, but the situations the
war creates makes these distinctions even more difficult. The roles Annemarie must play
blur the line between a child's responsibilities and an adult's responsibilities. Lowry uses
the war to demonstrate how confusing the separation between childhood and adulthood
can be. Because of the war, Annemarie needs greater protection, but at the same time
has to learn things that one normally does not learn until later life.

Annemarie is frequently compared and contrasted to other characters in the novel,

particularly Kirsti and Peter Neilsen. Kirsti's complete state of innocence and stream of
childish requests is juxtaposed with Annemarie's growing sense of responsibility.
Innocence, perhaps the most prominent feature of childhood, is no longer possible for
Annemarie. Because of this, she does not identify with her little sister. But Annemarie is
not sure she belongs with the adults, either. Her observation that Peter has "taken his
place in the world of adults" makes it clear that Annemarie does not feel like a member of
that world. Annemarie's concerns about her ability to be brave also make her feel that she
is mature. Yet she is beyond the point where her youth will protect her from being called
on for help.

The role of knowledge and concealment adds to the conflict of childhood versus
adulthood. Again, the war plays a part in complicating this issue. It is not appropriate for a
child to be told certain things, particularly concerning war. But in order for Annemarie to
process what is happening around her, she wants to know more. This curiosity is also a
fundamental part of growing up. But in Number the Stars, ignorance can be a form of self-
protection. So Annemarie struggles with differentiating between the information that is
being withheld for her own safety and the information that is being hidden because she is
so young.

Voyage and Transformation

Physical and mental voyages run throughout Number the Stars. The novel centers
around the trip that the Rosen's and the other Jews must make across the ocean to
safety. That voyage takes place in three parts: the trip from Copenhagen to Gilleleje, the
walk from the house to the boat, and the final crossing to Sweden. Parallel to this voyage
is the journey of Annemarie's growth. As she makes physical trips from place to place,
she is developing new ideas and new ways of viewing herself. The trip she makes

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through the woods to deliver the packet to Henrik is particularly symbolic. The passage
into the woods marks a transformation. Annemarie is taking on a job that an adult would
normally perform; thus, she makes literal and figurative steps towards maturity. Peter
Neilsen is another character we see transformed. His interactions with Mrs. Johansen
shift. Toward the end of the novel, Peter and Mrs. Johansen become equals.

Fairy tales
The reality of war is at times so terrible and strange that it feels unreal. Annemarie
sometimes has difficulty accepting the events of the war as real. She fictionalizes them,
making the war into a fairy tale reality. At other times, fairytales are contrasted to the war.
For example, Annemarie says that everything has changed except the fairy tales. The
fairy tales are also used as a means of showing that Annemarie is leaving her childhood
behind. Kirsti loves stories about kings and queens, but Annemarie does not care for
them. She even wants to correct her sister's overactive imagination at times. Despite
herself, though, Annemarie finds support in the world of fiction. Fairy tales are often used
as a way of explaining something that is hard to understand or cope with. So when her
life becomes truly frightening or confusing, Annemarie reverts to seeing the war as if it
were a fairy tale. As she goes to deliver the packet to Henrik, Annemarie makes the trip
into the story of Little Red Riding-Hood. By turning her own life into fiction, Annemarie is
able to deal with her fear and get the packet to her uncle. In the end, of course, reality is
nothing like the fairy tales, things do not always end well, and the heroes do not live
happily ever after. Peter Neilsen dies. It is revealed that Lise's death was a product of the
war, too. Even Kristi grows out of fairy tales.

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