The Hiding Place vs. Number the Stars vs . ???

[Kipling]

I will be teaching a literature class at a co-op next year to 7th, 8th, and 9th graders.  Our literature will follow the 4th year of the WTM recommendations (modern), and when we're studying WWII, I'm trying to decide if we should read The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom or Number the Stars by Lois Lowry.  Has anyone read these books with their middle/young high school students?  Which would you recommend we choose?  Or do you have another book to throw into the consideration? 

[Matryoshka]

The Endless Steppe?  Love that book. 

[Carol in Cal.]

They both have Christian content, but The Hiding Place is very Christian teaching oriented.  Both are good.  Number the Stars is one of my favorite books for maybe 5-6th grade, at all.  I think it would be a shame to miss it.  Having said that, it's a little young for a ninth grader.

 

Hopefully your living books biographies will include the excellent 'Stalin' and 'Hitler', both by Marrin, both absolutely perfect for your age categories.  

 

 

[HomeAgain]

I would ask you to consider A Faraway Island.  The books you have chosen will probably be on many of the children's personal reading lists, but this one is often overlooked and gives a rare glimpse into the other side of what happened.

 

Or I'd suggest The Boy In The Striped Pajamas.  The childlike names given to various names would give the kids more to discuss not just in how the book follows WWII, but how the author creates suggestions throughout of the innocence of the children involved.

[MEmama]

DS read Number the Stars this year. He liked it, especially since we had just been to Denmark, though it was definitely light reading for his age in both level and content. I'm contemplating having him read The Book Thief, but after not being able to sleep for days after watching the movie I doubt I could get through it. I'm not sure he would be less sensitive than me.

 

I didn't pick up on any "Christian content" in Number the Stars, fwiw. It's short and worthwhile, but IMO too young for 8th and 9th for sure.

[Alessandra]

Agreeing that reading level for Number the Stars might be too low. There is a good movie of the book, btw.

 

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Just checked Amazon -- reading grade 7 and up, or so they say. Seemed younger to me, fwiw. Movie too.

 

If you do exercises in comparing books, there is good contrast -- boy protagonist vs girl protagonist; hope vs devastation.

 

Suggesting these if you do common core. CC often has comparisons, book to book, book to film, etc.

 

What about Anna Frank?

 

Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz, is not difficult in terms of the language. But emotionally it it can be difficult, because some of the prisoners become almost as bad as their captors. It's a more complex picture of good and evil than in the above two books. Your grade span is challenging, a lot would depend on maturity of individual students.

 

Another movie, Au Revoir, Les Enfants.

Edited May 10, 2016 by Alessandra

[2_girls_mommy]

Both are good.  I think THe Hiding Place would be a bit more at reading level too, but that wouldn't stop me from using Number the Stars? Both are very worthy of reading.  The Hiding Place has a wonderful uplifting Christian message to it that comes from the very darkest of places that she describes as well.  Number the Stars feels more about the war, if that makes sense, and less about the message of Christ.  It doesn't take place in the camps like the Hiding Place, so it might be better for sensitive kids if you are worried about that.

 

If you did Number the Stars, you could watch a video of The Hiding Place just so that they are aware of the story too.  There are a movie and a cartoon version that I have watched with my kids.

[Lori D.]

Well, for grades 7-9, if this is a Literature-based class (just using titles from the 20th century) I would assume you are starting to do some beginning literary analysis. Biographies/autobiographies (The Hiding Place) just are not written in the same way as fiction, and therefore are not analyzed in the same way -- it's pretty hard, actually, to do much analysis on most biographies -- they are just straight-forward retellings of a person's experiences. So even though it is short and designed for grade 4-6 reading level, you would likely get a bit more of actual literary analysis out of Number the Stars.

 

However, I think a work you would get even more literary analysis out of would be either The Devil's Arithmetic (time-travel, Jewish teen suddenly finds herself in the Holocaust), or, The Book Thief (German civilians living in Germany during WW2). The basic plot of The Book Thief is a coming of age story -- foster girl sent to live with an eccentric couple in an small town just trying to get through daily life during the privations caused by the war, and the family briefly hides an escaped Jew in their basement (the only connection with the Holocaust). The unusual literary element is that the book is narrated by the character of Death who is trying to understand humans. Preview first -- there is rough language (not 4-letter words, but several characters just treat others roughly), and the characters are quite flawed (the main character as well) -- and frankly, privation does not usually bring out the best in people, and you see that rough/raw edge in this book. Personally, I liked The Book Thief quite a lot, and I do think it's a great one for discussion. Just wanted to throw in that caveat that sensitive middle schoolers might not be ready for it.

 

On the other hand, if the class focus is reading fiction in support of the modern historical time frame (rather than as Literature and literary analysis), then there are a number of historical fiction works you might also look at for covering that time period of WW2 -- you might consider reading 2-3 of them and comparing the different experiences of the characters. So, possibly things like the Holocaust experience, Japanese Americans in camps in the US during WW2, civilian or solider experiences of the war in the Pacific Theater, soldier experiences int he European Theater, Russian civilian or European Theater/Eastern Front experiences, etc.

 

These threads have lots of suggestions:

Which historical fiction to supplement WWII study?

Books like Number the Stars -- most suggests for elementary/young middle school ages

Number the Stars or Diary of Anne Frank?

 

I personally love The Hiding Place as an amazing testament to living out the Christian faith. The lessons that Corrie tenBoom learned and shared in her autobiography still resonate and repeatedly come up in my own thoughts and in our family discussions years after reading the book. If I were doing it in a co-op class, I'd want to focus on these spiritual/faith elements as the discussion, rather than try and make the book about the historical events, or about literary analysis. JMO. :)

Edited May 12, 2016 by Lori D.

[...................]

Number the Stars is way too easy for that age group although a wonderful

Book.

 

Hiding Place is pushing it for 7th graders mostly because of graphic content. I would choose that one but Include a warning that includes a little bit of detail on the nature

Of the mature Content.

 

Hiding Place is VERY Christian - it's the whole reason she continued with faith and forgiveness.

[HeWillSoar]

Number the Stars is way too easy for that age group although a wonderful

Book.

 

Hiding Place is pushing it for 7th graders mostly because of graphic content. I would choose that one but Include a warning that includes a little bit of detail on the nature

Of the mature Content.

 

Hiding Place is VERY Christian - it's the whole reason she continued with faith and forgiveness.

 

I agree with the above about the mature content.  It would be too much for my rising 7th grader, at this point. 

[...................]

^^ yes my own rising 7th grader could not handle it for sure. My rising 9th grader is ready.

[Farrar]

Seconding everyone here saying that Number the Stars is really more of a younger book. It's still worth a read if kids don't know it. It would depend on the class. If they need an easy book to break things up and/or you're concerned about covering the Holocaust in any sort of graphic detail, then it could still be a good choice. It's super short and has a more uplifting theme.

 

However, I agree with Lori D that The Devil's Arithmetic or The Book Thief might be better middle school level lit choices.

[Garga]

I never got too far into The Book Thief because I found the beginning very sad with the dead little boy and then someone else dead.  After 2 or 3 deaths, I stopped.

 

I have held off on The Hiding Place until next year for my boy (he'll be in 9th next year) because he's very sensitive to cruelty to other people.  Even though The Hiding Place isn't graphic, the ideas of the guards being cruel to the people in the camps would have been too much for him before now.

 

I haven't read the Stars book. 

 

Just letting you know that as a parent, if I knew you were doing The Hiding Place, I wouldn't have let my son read it before 8th at the earliest.  Other kids might be ready for it, but mine wasn't.

[SilverMoon]

.

Edited September 6, 2023 by SilverMoon

[MyLittleBears]

We loved the Hiding Place. We also listened to The Boy on the Wooden Box which is about Schindler's Jews- very good but very detailed and upsetting. (probably even more so than The Hiding Place)

[GoVanGogh]

DS read The Boy on the Wooden Box for book club in 6th grade. It is still one of his favorite books on the subject.

 

We read The Book Thief last year and really enjoyed it, given the topic. The beginning is sad, but the story is very profound (that not all Germans were bad and some risked their lives to help Jewish people) and the writing style is so poetic. We used "A guide for book clubs" by K Cope to further extend our conversation. 

 

We read Number the Stars this year (8th), using Progeny Press guide. I would agree that the reading level is much lower than the other books mentioned here. DS is an accelerated reader, but has physical and learning issues that impact his writing ability. I wanted something under his reading level to work on writing. We did watch a documentary on the Dutch resistance, which really added to our studies and tied in nicely with the book.

[Tanaqui]

To be honest, I prefer Hitler's Canary to Number the Stars. Same event, different storytelling method. That's a new one a lot of people don't know about yet.

[Guest]

Another vote for The Endless Steppe. We also read: Corrie Ten Boom: Keeper of the Angel's Den from the Christian Heroes: Then and Now series. 

[Lilaclady]

Have you looked at the room upstairs by Johanna Reiss? It is a first person account of what happened to 2 girls who were hiding out in a house and no one in the village knew they were there. I found it was more detailed than Anne Frank about the effect of the holocaust but was not too heavy.

[Tanaqui]

I believe you mean The Upstairs Room. It's a good book, though the writing style is a little weird. There's a sequel, as well, forget what that's called.

[CAtoVA]

I taught The Devil's Arithmetic (Jane Yolen) to a middle school aged group and they loved it.

 

I just got Prisoner B-3087 to read aloud with my rising 7th grade son. It's based on the true story of a boy who survived 10 different concentration camps.

Edited May 14, 2016 by chiefcookandbottlewasher

[AggieMama]

Farewell to Manzanar will give a Japanese perspective on American internment camps. Night is also great, but maybe as an optional reading.

[Sahamamama]

They both have Christian content, but The Hiding Place is very Christian teaching oriented.  Both are good.  Number the Stars is one of my favorite books for maybe 5-6th grade, at all.  I think it would be a shame to miss it.  Having said that, it's a little young for a ninth grader.

 

Hopefully your living books biographies will include the excellent 'Stalin' and 'Hitler', both by Marrin, both absolutely perfect for your age categories.  

 

I agree with this. Number the Stars is too good to miss, but more geared to 5th & 6th graders. We read it last year (with 2nd, 2nd & 4th graders), and they had no difficulty. There is much less of a theological message with NTS.

 

The Hiding Place might open up more possibilities for discussion with junior high students, for several reasons. First, it is autobiographical, while NTS is historical fiction, so students will know they are reading about a "real" person's actual life. Secondly, the author, who herself lived through the events she relates, had to work through those experiences following the Holocaust, so it's possible for students to see how she ultimately handled that process. And, finally, this story is based on a strongly Christian message -- that the ten Booms were motivated by their Christian faith to help their Jewish friends, no matter what the cost.

 

http://tenboom.org/

 

https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10006914

 

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/voices/boom.html

 

http://www.biography.com/people/corrie-ten-boom-21358155#work-after-the-war

Edited June 1, 2016 by Sahamamama