Number the Stars
Lois Lowry (1989)
“A ten-year-old girl helps hide her best friend from the Nazis — and discovers that ordinary people can choose to be brave.”
Language Register
Conversational and clear — accessible to middle-grade readers, with moments of deliberate gravity and controlled tension
Syntax Profile
Short to medium sentences, direct subject-verb-object constructions. Lowry favors active verbs and concrete nouns. Subordinate clauses are used for contrast rather than complexity. Dialogue is naturalistic and age-appropriate. Internal monologue is spare — Annemarie thinks in observations, not abstractions.
Figurative Language
Low to moderate — Lowry uses figurative language precisely rather than densely. Key images (the dark woods, the green light of Sweden across the water, the necklace, the stars) are allowed to carry weight through placement and repetition, not through elaboration.
Era-Specific Language
Nazi euphemism for the deportation of Jews to concentration camps; Lowry uses it as the characters hear it — sinister through understatement
The organized Danish civilian network that smuggled Jews to Sweden; capitalized throughout as a proper noun
The Jewish New Year, the date the Nazis selected for the deportation of Danish Jews, October 1943
The strait between Denmark and neutral Sweden; the route of escape
The Nazi symbol on German soldiers' uniforms and vehicles; used sparingly but with full weight
The Danes — used in contrast to 'de Jøder' (the Jews) to mark the Nazi separation that Danes rejected
How Characters Speak — Class & Identity
Annemarie Johansen
Direct, observational language. She narrates what she sees and feels without interpretation, trusting the reader to supply meaning. When afraid, her language becomes very physical — knees, hands, heart.
A middle-class Danish girl: educated, polite, with access to fairy tales and fairy-tale logic that the war forces her to supersede. Her simplicity is not limitation — it is the right instrument for what she needs to do.
Ellen Rosen
Warm, theatrical, quick to laugh and to cry. Her language is generous — she compliments, she teases, she draws people out. In moments of fear, she goes silent.
A Jewish child from a family that is integrated into Danish life but carries awareness of vulnerability. Ellen's theatrical warmth is partly a way of belonging — making herself lovable, making herself safe.
Mama (Mrs. Johansen)
Practical and direct in ordinary moments; controlled and understated in crisis. She tells what needs to be told and no more. Her silences carry as much meaning as her speech.
A Danish mother and Resistance participant who has learned to manage information as a form of protection. Her withholding from Annemarie is not deception but care.
Papa (Mr. Johansen)
Warm and measured. His most important communication is physical — steady hands, the act of holding Ellen, the confidence of his posture before the soldiers.
Danish middle-class decency as a form of moral authority. Papa speaks least in moments of greatest danger; his body speaks instead.
Peter Nielsen
Urgent and compressed in speech — he delivers information quickly and moves quickly. Little warmth in his words, though Annemarie perceives warmth in him.
A man changed by Resistance work and by grief. He was Lise's fiancé; he has become something harder and more purposeful. His compressed speech reflects the compression of someone who lives under constant operational pressure.
Uncle Henrik
Expansive and physical when relaxed; precise and coded when working. He knows how to be two different people in two different registers.
A fisherman who is also a Resistance operative — his ordinariness is his cover, and he has learned to inhabit it completely. His coded questions about weather and fishing are spoken with the same ease as his genuine ones.
Narrator's Voice
Third-person close — the narrative stays tightly bound to Annemarie's perception and understanding. We know what she knows when she knows it. Lowry never gives adult information to the reader without giving it to Annemarie first. This choice makes every revelation feel discovered rather than delivered, and it means Annemarie's gradual understanding is the reader's gradual understanding.
Tone Progression
Chapters 1-3
Ordinary with undercurrents — childhood warmth shadowed by occupation
The prose is warm and domestic. The tension is present but manageable. The girls are girls before they are figures in a historical drama.
Chapters 4-7
Mounting urgency, interrupted by pastoral calm
The midnight soldiers, then the farmhouse escape, then the rural peace of Henrik's coast. Lowry alternates tightness with breathing room.
Chapters 8-10
Direct fear, then earned clarity
The coffin confrontation, the night run, and the aftermath. The prose does not relax until the boat has sailed and the truth has been told.
Stylistic Comparisons
- The Diary of a Young Girl (Anne Frank) — first-person Jewish perspective versus third-person Danish child observer; both show the ordinariness of resistance
- The Hiding Place (Corrie ten Boom) — adult Christian perspective on hiding Jews in the Netherlands; same moral clarity, very different voice
- Island of the Blue Dolphins — Lowry's own style at its clearest: simple prose, a young female protagonist, physical survival as moral test
Key Vocabulary from This Book
Notable words used in this text — click to see full definitions