Number the Stars Themes

A best friend—it's a lucky thing to have, don't you think? A BFF always has your back and understands you like nobody else does. You know, they just get you. In Number the Stars, Annemarie and El...

First things first: all of the good-guy characters in Number the Stars are courageous. We just wanted to lay that out there. Okay, moving on. Usually we associate bravery and courage with doing big...

Remember that Star of David necklace that Ellen is wearing when the Nazi soldiers first come to the house? You know, the one that graces the cover of almost every publication of Number the Stars? T...

In Number the Stars, lying can sometimes mean the difference between life and death. Think about it: Ellen pretends to be the Johansens' daughter, the whole gang fakes a funeral in order to cover u...

War might seem like a far-off, hazy reality for us, but that sure wasn't the case for Annemarie and her family. In Number the Stars, war affects every part of daily life for the Danes. On the survi...

Okay, okay, we admit it: Shmoop is afraid of giant spiders. But we'd take a million giant spiders over the kind of fear the characters face in Number the Stars. What they're up against is pretty te...

This one kind of goes without saying, don't you think? The Holocaust was all about prejudice. The Nazis judged and persecuted people based on their race and religion. But while the Nazis singled ou...

Number the Stars kind of turns the idea of being a criminal upside down. Good people like Henrik, Peter, and Annemarie's whole family do things that are technically against the law—and punishable...