Number the Stars by Lois Lowry

Title: Number the Stars
Author: Lois Lowry
# pages: 137
Date published: 1989
Genre: Young adult fiction
Challenge(s): Book Award Reading Challenge (1990 Newbery, National Jewish Book Award), Around the World in 80 Books (Denmark), Spring Reading Thing 2008, A Novel Challenge Mini Challenge #2 (children's book)

Rating: (one of the best)

Setting: Copenhagen, Denmark

First Sentence:

“I’ll race you to the corner, Ellen!”

Synopsis: Number the Stars is about 10-year-old best friends Annemarie Johansen and Ellen Rosen. It is about what their lives were like in 1943 when German soldiers occupied their country, when they didn’t have enough food to eat, and when little girls needed to be braver than they should have to be. It is an emotional, moving, and excellently written little book that packs a big emotional punch—made all the more powerful by the Afterward in which the author tells you where fact ends and fiction begins.

Random Thoughts:

• The author’s web site: http://www.loislowry.com/index.html
• Lois Lowry says on her web site that when the Newbery Award committee called in 1990 to tell her that she’d won the prize for Number the Stars, she was at her desk. But when they called 4 years later to tell her that The Giver won the Newbery, her publisher had to send a radiogram (a message transmitted by a relay of amateur radio operators) to notify her because she was in Antartica!

If you've reviewed this book (or a book by this author), leave me a link to your review in the comments and I'll link to your review, too!

Also reviewed at:

Maw Books, Heather, The Newbery Project, Things Mean a Lot, Deliciously Clean Reads, Tiny Little Reading Room, SMS Book Reviews, Becky’s Book Reviews, An Adventure in Reading, Breaking the Fourth Wall, Books Lists Life, 1morechapter, Thoughts of Joy, Book Addiction