Preview
Copywork
About This Passage
This passage is the chapter's first widening of frame: it moves the reader out of the immediate encounter with two soldiers on a corner and into the larger fact that an entire occupied country is operating with a hidden second life. The illegal newspaper, the brave courier, the burning after reading, and the night conversations are all forms of the Resistance — and the chapter places them inside Annemarie's pretending-to-unpack-schoolbooks listening, so that the reader sees how a ten-year-old absorbs the politics of the occupation by overhearing rather than being told. Copying this passage trains attention to how Lowry compresses a great deal of background — illegal papers, sabotage, the structure of resistance — into a single sentence that begins with a child pretending not to listen.
Although she pretended to be absorbed in unpacking her schoolbooks, Annemarie listened, and she knew what her mother was referring to. De Frie Danske—The Free Danes —was an illegal newspaper; Peter Ne...
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Retell chapter one with attention to the way Lois Lowry layers small ordinary moments with the large fact of occupation. Move from the schoolyard race to the encounter with the German soldiers, the recognition of 'the Giraffe,' Kirsti's pushing of the soldier's hand, the conversation between the mothers about the Resistance and the illegal newspaper De Frie Danske, Mrs. Rosen's warning to be 'one of many,' and Kirsti's wish for a yellow cupcake at the chapter's close. Attend to how Annemarie's interior thoughts are placed beside her outer composure throughout.
Discussion Questions
- Lowry tells us Annemarie's inner thought during the encounter — 'Don't talk so much, she told herself. Just answer them, that's all.' What does this technique of giving us the character's silent self-instruction reveal about how Annemarie has learned to operate around the German soldiers? How is her interior carefulness different from Kirsti's open defiance, and what is the chapter saying about what age does to a child's relationship with danger?
- Mrs. Rosen tells the girls, 'It is important to be one of the crowd, always. Be one of many. Be sure that they never have reason to remember your face.' Argue for what this advice reveals about the specific kind of danger Mrs. Rosen senses and what kind of survival rule she is teaching. How is the rule both protective and dehumanizing — a way of staying alive that requires erasing one's own visibility?
+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide
Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
deeply engaged in or appearing to focus completely on something; Annemarie 'pretended to be absorbed in unpacking her schoolbooks' so that her mother and Mrs. Rosen would not notice her listening to the talk about the Resistance.
Item 2
from time to time but not regularly; Peter Neilsen brings the illegal newspaper De Frie Danske to the Johansens occasionally, the irregular pattern itself part of how he avoids being caught.
Item 3
common, expected, not unusual; the illegal newspaper is hidden 'among ordinary books and papers' — the very ordinariness of the surrounding pages is what makes the dangerous one possible to deliver.
+ 5 more vocabulary words in the complete study guide
Critical Thinking
+ 6 more questions in the complete study guide
Get the complete study guide — free
Sign up and get your first book with every chapter included. Copywork, discussion questions, vocabulary, and critical thinking.
Sign up free