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ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSTwelve-year-old Miri lives with her parents in the Pletzl, the Jewish quarter of Paris, in the summer of 1942, and the one place she ever feels truly safe is stretched out on the roof outside her window, looking at the sky. When French police begin rounding up the Jewish families of Paris and loading them onto buses, Miri is separated from her mother inside their apartment building and left not knowing what became of her. Just before Miri can be trapped inside the stadium where thousands of prisoners are being held, her neighbor Sara Rosenbaum places her own two year old daughter, Nora, into Miri's arms and tells her to run. A young nun disguises Miri as a Catholic girl named Marie, and eventually sends her, and later Nora separately, to a boarding school in a small town built beside a real castle called Chenonceau. The castle stretches across a river on stone arches, and that river happens to be the border between Nazi occupied France and the unoccupied Vichy zone, guarded day and night by German soldiers. Cut off from her family and desperate to find Nora again, Miri has to decide how much courage she can find to get the little girl, and herself, to safety.
Free Battle of the Books questions for The Night War
SPOILERSEvery one of these has the same answer, and that is the point. In a real battle the question is read aloud with a dozen other books in play, and students have a few seconds to place it. Here is what a battle might ask about The Night War. Use them as a quiz, a trivia round, or BOTB practice.
Where in the book they come from
- Early in the book
In what book does a woman throw a girl's cartité out a moving bus window?
✓ Answer
The Night War by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
Miri's identity card has the word JUIVE stamped across it in red. Madame Rosenbaum gets rid of it and pulls on Miri's sweater with its one yellow star, so that nothing on Miri marks her as Jewish.
- First half
In what book does a nun fall down a staircase while carrying a book and a pile of laundry?
✓ Answer
The Night War by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
Sister Dominique is bringing Marie a history book about Catherine de' Medici when one of the gowns tangles around her leg. Her badly broken leg is what forces someone else to take over the secret work she had been doing.
- First half
In what book does a girl crawl across a ballroom's checkerboard floor to stay below the windows?
✓ Answer
The Night War by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
The long gallery over the river is the actual crossing point, and the heavy gun upstream could spot anyone walking through it. So Marie and the woman she is guiding cross on their hands and knees through the beautiful empty room where kings and queens once danced.
- Second half
In what book does a girl refuse to clear a ruined garden with a scythe?
✓ Answer
The Night War by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
The woman who has hired Miri as her gardener keeps insisting on a scythe, and Miri, who watched her father mow with a push cutter in Germany, has no idea how to swing one. Their bickering over tools is where a real friendship starts.
- Second half
In what book does a nun set a box of monthly supplies on the table before a girl?
✓ Answer
The Night War by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
Miri came back with a bloodstained dress and told the other students it was a private female matter, so Sister Annunciata plays along in front of the whole table. Then she offers to show Miri how to use them, and once nobody is looking, she winks.
- Near the end
In what book does a girl push her fingers straight through a woman's arm and scream?
✓ Answer
The Night War by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
Catherine de' Medici invites Miri to try touching her, perfectly certain she cannot. Miri's hand goes right through the embroidered sleeve and comes out underneath. Miri screams and the ghost cackles, then admits she can feel only the clothes she is wearing.
