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Copywork
About This Passage
Mrs. Rosen's instruction to be 'one of many' is one of the most important lines in the chapter and one of the most quietly frightening sentences in the book. She is teaching Annemarie a survival rule that the Rosens, as a Jewish family in Nazi-occupied Copenhagen, already understand: do not give the soldiers a face to recognize. Copying this passage helps a reader feel the weight of the warning — the doorway, the disappearance, the closed door — and to notice how Lois Lowry uses simple short sentences to make a moral instruction that will return throughout the book.
"They will remember your faces," Mrs. Rosen said, turning in the doorway to the hall. "It is important to be one of the crowd, always. Be one of many. Be sure that they never have reason to remember y...
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Retell the events of chapter one. Be sure to include Annemarie racing Ellen down Østerbrogade, the two German soldiers who stop them at the corner, the soldier the girls call 'the Giraffe,' Kirsti pushing the soldier's hand away, the conversation between the mothers about the Resistance and De Frie Danske, Mrs. Rosen's warning to be 'one of many,' and Kirsti's wish for a yellow cupcake with pink frosting.
Discussion Questions
- What does the story show about Annemarie's strategy when the German soldier asks her questions? How does she try to keep the conversation calm and short? What in the story tells you that she has thought about how to behave around the soldiers?
- Mrs. Rosen tells the girls, 'It is important to be one of the crowd, always. Be one of many.' What does this advice reveal about the kind of danger Mrs. Rosen is worried about? Why is being 'one of many' a kind of safety in Copenhagen in 1943?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
the secret group of Danish people working against the Nazi occupation; Annemarie has heard her parents talk about Resistance fighters who damage German trucks and bomb factories — they are very brave, and sometimes they are caught and killed.
Item 2
when one country has taken over another country with its army; there has been no real coffee in Copenhagen since the beginning of the Nazi occupation, three years before the chapter begins.
Item 3
the feeling that something or someone deserves no respect; Annemarie thinks of the soldiers 'with contempt' because they have been in Denmark three years and still cannot speak Danish.
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Critical Thinking
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