Number the Stars. Lois Lowry

her doll in a circle.

      “It doesn’t matter, because it’s only a game anyway,” Ellen pointed out. “Tivoli can be over there, by that chair. ‘Come, Scarlett,’ ” she said, using her doll voice, “ ‘we shall go to Tivoli to dance and watch the fireworks, and maybe there will be some handsome men there! Bring your silly daughter Bonnie, and she can ride on the carousel.’ ”

      Annemarie grinned and walked her Scarlett toward the chair that Ellen had designated as Tivoli. She loved Tivoli Gardens, in the heart of Copenhagen; her parents had taken her there, often, when she was a little girl. She remembered the music and the brightly colored lights, the carousel and ice cream and especially the magnificent fireworks in the evenings: the huge colored splashes and bursts of lights in the evening sky.

      “I remember the fireworks best of all,” she commented to Ellen.

      “Me too,” Kirsti said. “I remember the fireworks.”

      “Silly,” Annemarie scoffed. “You never saw the fireworks.” Tivoli Gardens was closed now. The German occupation forces had burned part of it, perhaps as a way of punishing the fun-loving Danes for their lighthearted pleasures.

      Kirsti drew herself up, her small shoulders stiff. “I did too,” she said belligerently. “It was my birthday. I woke up in the night and I could hear the booms. And there were lights in the sky. Mama said it was fireworks for my birthday!”

      Then Annemarie remembered. Kirsti’s birthday was late in August. And that night, only a month before, she, too, had been awakened and frightened by the sound of explosions. Kirsti was right – the sky in the southeast had been ablaze, and Mama had comforted her by calling it a birthday celebration. “Imagine, such fireworks for a little girl five years old!” Mama had said, sitting on their bed, holding the dark curtain aside to look through the window at the lighted sky.