Anne Frank the Diary of a Young Girl Author: Anne Frank | Language: English | ISBN:
0812415086 | Format: EPUB
Anne Frank the Diary of a Young Girl Description
Amazon.com Review
A beloved classic since its initial publication in 1947, this vivid, insightful journal is a fitting memorial to the gifted Jewish teenager who died at Bergen-Belsen, Germany, in 1945. Born in 1929, Anne Frank received a blank diary on her 13th birthday, just weeks before she and her family went into hiding in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. Her marvelously detailed, engagingly personal entries chronicle 25 trying months of claustrophobic, quarrelsome intimacy with her parents, sister, a second family, and a middle-aged dentist who has little tolerance for Anne's vivacity. The diary's universal appeal stems from its riveting blend of the grubby particulars of life during wartime (scant, bad food; shabby, outgrown clothes that can't be replaced; constant fear of discovery) and candid discussion of emotions familiar to every adolescent (everyone criticizes me, no one sees my real nature, when will I be loved?). Yet Frank was no ordinary teen: the later entries reveal a sense of compassion and a spiritual depth remarkable in a girl barely 15. Her death epitomizes the madness of the Holocaust, but for the millions who meet Anne through her diary, it is also a very individual loss.
--Wendy Smith --This text refers to the
Mass Market Paperback
edition.
Review
"The new edition reveals a new depth to Anne's dreams, irritations, hardship, and passions…There may be no better way to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II than to reread
The Diary of a Young Girl, a testament to an indestructivle nobility of spirit in the face of pure evil."—
Chicago Tribune --This text refers to the
Mass Market Paperback
edition.
See all Editorial Reviews
- Hardcover
- Publisher: Perfection Learning (June 1, 1993)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0812415086
- ISBN-13: 978-0812415087
- Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.3 x 1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Imagine that someday you are remembered for all eternity at a very particular time and at a very particular age. You could be remembered forever as being 25 on September the 11th or you could be remembered as being 44 when JFK was shot. It seems awfully cruel for someone to be remembered between the ages of 13 to 15. Do you remember what you were like at that age? Would you want anyone to think of you as that old for as long as your name is remembered? Such is the fate of Anne Frank. Now, I never read this book when I was young. High schools, in my experience, tend to assign the play version of this story when they want to convey Anne Frank's tale. Anne tends to be remembered as the little girl who once wrote, "I still believe that people are really good at heart" in spite of her sufferings. So I should be forgiven for expecting this book to be the dewy-eyed suppositions of a saintly little girl. Instead, I found someone with verve, complexity, and a personality that I did not always particularly like. What I discovered, was the true Anne Frank.
The diary of Anne begins when she is 13 years of age and the Jews are already wearing yellow stars in Amsterdam. Anne is your usual precocious girl, flirting with boys and being impudent when she can get away with it. When at last the time comes for the Franks to go into hiding (Margot Frank, Anne's sister, has been issued an order for her removal) they do so with another family, the Van Daans. In a small floor hidden above Otto Frank's old workplace the two families are aided by faithful friends and employees. Over the course of the diary we watch and listen through Anne's eyes as, for two years, the people in the attic are put through terrible deprivations and trials.
I have finally, at the age of 33, gotten around to reading Anne Frank's diary. There is little point in adding another glowing review. Everything has been said. But after reading some of the negative reviews, I feel compelled to respond. It seems there are two primary criticisms (Three if you count the ridiculous idea that the diary is a forgery, which I won't dignify). The first is that Anne doesn't talk a lot about the war or the holocaust. To this, I can only say, that's all for the better. She was a thirteen year girl living in total isolation from the rest of the world. She really had no special expertise or light to shed on these subjects. There are many excellent history books on both of these subjects. The second criticism is simply that the book is boring. She talks too much about her day to day life, her thoughts, her feelings, and so on. To this I can only say, what part of "Diary of a Young Girl" is ambiguous? The annex was her entire world. What do you expect her to write about?
What a few don't seem to understand is that this is not a "book about World War II", or even about the holocaust. If that is what she had written about, the diary wouldn't even be a footnote in history. This is the story of one young girl, in her own voice, trying to figure out what it means to live, to grow, and to be human in the most depraved and inhumane circumstances. She wrote about her hopes, her dreams, her fears, and occasionally about peeling potatoes. But the thing that some people don't see is that even when writing about the most mundane topics, she was actually writing about people, about how they endure and falter, about how they come together and how they fall apart.
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