Number In The Stars Themes

Number in the Stars by Lois Lowry is an incredible book. I always am hesitant about talking about the Holocaust to younger children, but I feel that the book was truthful and a good way to go about the topic. Personally, I will be teaching elementary school, but within special education and sometimes I think that is a hard subject to bring up. The book talks of a girl named Annamarie and the Johansen family, who helped the Rosen family (who is Jewish) by taking in their daughter, Ellen, who pretended to be Lise (the Johansen’s oldest daughter who was killed because of her work with the Resistance) while her parents have fled with Peter, Lise’s fiancé. The text uses different themes, motifs, and symbols throughout the books to help continue on the story of the Johansen and Rosen’s. One major theme in the book is lying, because lying can sometimes save a persons life. One part in the book, the Nazi’s showed up to the Johansen’s house in the middle of the night and they were questioning Ellen’s relation to them, because she had brown hair and they all were blonde. In the book:

“She realized too, with an icy feeling, why Papa had torn them [the baby pictures] from the book. At the bottom of each page, below the photograph itself, was written the date. And the real Lise Johansen had been born twenty-one years earlier.”

Mr. Johansen, more commonly

The Star of David is the symbol of the Jewish beliefs and traditions. But in the novel, it is a reminder that Ellen and all the other people in her religion must hide what they believe and themselves. Annemarie keeps Ellen’s necklace as a sign of commitment to Ellen and the resistance. The woods and as Annamarie goes through them, show that in the process of her getting through them, she is growing up and transforming into an adult. For the Rosen family, the woods represent the travel from danger to