The Night War by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley - Novel Study

In July 1942, French police—not German soldiers—swept a Paris neighborhood and held more than 7,000 Jewish people in an indoor stadium before deporting them. Twelve-year-old Miri escapes that roundup carrying her neighbor's two-year-old daughter, and spends the rest of The Night War smuggling people across a castle bridge that spans the line between occupied France and the Vichy zone.

This 25-page novel study for Kimberly Brubaker Bradley's The Night War is built for grades 5–8 and treats the history as seriously as the students do. Discussion questions that ask readers to take a position, writing prompts with real stakes, and sixteen activities that get students producing rather than just observing.

Includes:

• Summary and noteworthy facts, with the documented history behind the novel
• Eight discussion questions and a themes overview
• Five essay and five short answer questions
• Book-specific tips for adults sharing The Night War with learners, including how to handle the hard parts and what to watch for afterward
• Story structure basics with fill-in-the-blank sheets
• Literary devices—magical realism, motif, foreshadowing, dramatic irony, and symbolism—with definitions, practice, and an answer key
• Sixteen creative activities, including:
  • Reading the Poster—take apart a real piece of persuasion, then build the counter-poster
  • Proof You Exist—what a forged identity costs, and what it saves
  • Somewhere on the Line—map the bridge, the border, and the choice
  • The Ones History (Tries To) Forget—guided research into who else the Nazis targeted
  • The Smashed Geranium—close reading of a single object
  • Two Names—Miri, Marie, and what a name carries
  • Catherine's Reckoning—the ghost in a historical novel, and why Bradley put her there
  …plus Brave Enough, The Kitchen Garden, Going Viral, Text Me Back, Change the Genre, A Different Perspective, two advice columns, and more!

Students come away with a working definition of complicity, a sense of how ordinary people made extraordinary choices, and the media literacy to recognize the same machinery when it shows up in their own feeds.

Please note: Book text is not included—please find The Night War at your local library or bookstore.

The Night War is written by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley and published by Dial Books for Young Readers.