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Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl | 
 enlarge | Author: Anne Frank
Creators: Eleanor Roosevelt, B.m. Mooyaart
Publisher: Bantam
Category: Book
List Price: $5.99
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Rating:  625 reviews
Sales Rank: 748
Media: Paperback
Pages: 304
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 6.8 x 4.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 0553296981
Dewey Decimal Number: 949.2071092
EAN: 9780553296983
ASIN: 0553296981
Publication Date: June 1, 1993
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Amazon.com
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
Product Description
Discovered in the attic in which she spent the last years of her life, Anne Frank's remarkable diary has since become a world classic -- a powerful reminder of the horrors of war and an eloquent testament to the human spirit. In 1942, with Nazis occupying Holland, a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl and her family fled their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding. For the next two years, until their whereabouts were betrayed to the Gestapo, they and another family lived cloistered in the "Secret Annex" of an old office building. Cut off from the outside world, they faced hunger, boredom, the constant cruelties of living in confined quarters, and the ever-present threat of discovery and death. In her diary Anne Frank recorded vivid impressions of her experiences during this period. By turns thoughtful, moving, and amusing, her account offers a fascinating commentary on human courage and frailty and a compelling self-portrait of a sensitive and spirited young woman whose promise was tragically cut short.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 620 more reviews...
 Young girl, heck. Diary of a young woman is more like it. July 30, 2004
E. R. Bird (Manhattan, NY)
130 out of 145 found this review helpful
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. There are good times and bad, but Anne is a singularly biased narrator and her observations must usually be taken with a grain of salt. After a while you become so comfortable with Anne's observations and voice that the final page of the narrative comes as a shock when the capture of Anne and her family is finally announced.
I recently had the mixed pleasure of finding and rereading my own diary from around the age of 14. After forcing myself to look through the occasional passage here and there I was forced to conclude that for her age, Anne is a marvelous writer. She has a sense of drama, tension, and narrative that is particularly enthralling. It's painful to think about what a great writer she could have been had she lived any longer. Honestly, the Anne I met in this book showed all the worst characteristics of her age. I found her detestation of her own mother to be particularly repugnant. Then I remembered... she's an early adolescent. Of course she hates her mother! Of course she's just simply awful a lot of the time. But you can see who she's becoming, and that's what makes the book so hard to get through. You can see her growth and her character. You know that she's learning and trying to understand what it means to be a human being during World War II. It's all the more awful that this would be the age she was preserved at.
The book is remarkable on so many levels. I think young teenage girls will understand Anne's plight intrinsically. Who couldn't? Who doesn't remember the rocky years of 13-15? The need for attention? The sobbing for no particular reason? By the end of the diary, Anne becomes far more philosophical. She no longer records the family's every move and action. Instead, she ponders questions like whether or not young people are lonelier than old people. Or what it means to be good. Though you may not like the protagonist of this book at all times, you come to understand and sympathize with her. She is a remarkable author, all the more so when you consider that this diary was written for her eyes alone at the time. If I could require kids to read something in school, I think this would top the list. It probably remains the best Holocaust children's book in existence today.
A poignant book filled with tears and laughter April 29, 2000
Kali (United Kingdom)
63 out of 82 found this review helpful
A lot has been said about "The Diary of Anne Frank." Some people have even claimed that it is a fake, which is an outrageous claim that denigrates those who died in the Holocaust and those that survived. This book is testament to a child's spirit and humanity as she hides in ever deteriorating circumstances with her family in an attic over an office in Amsterdam. We are witnesses to her first kiss with Peter a boy also in hiding, and her stormy relationship with her mother which she tries to resolve often unsuccessfully. We see flares of brilliance as she tries to understand human nature as well as the innocence of youth when she says, "basically I believe most people are good." The Diary of Anne Frank would probably be just an ordinary young girl's memoirs if the Holocaust had not happened. However the Holocaust did happen and Anne Frank's diary stands for all the young girls whose lives were ended before they had a chance to blossom. If any book was to be made compulsory reading in schools then this book should be it. Through Anne Frank we will never forget her humanity or for that matter our own.
 Definitive Edition May 29, 2008
! Bear Computer Repair (on the beach)
47 out of 88 found this review helpful
I read Ann Frank Diary Of A Young Girl a long time ago and I still have it.
I thought that in this definitive edition,there would be much more text and much more new revelations.
In this edition,her writings about her sexual curiosity,her unpleasant feelings toward her mother and others is included along with a few added paragraphs that were omitted in the original version.
Comparing the first version and The Critical edition and The Definitive addition doesn't make lots of sense to me.That's enough on "the editions".
Back to Ann Frank's Diary, the one thing that always gets me misty eyed is that she is so young and that her attitude and outlook is so happy and hopeful.She was an optimist.
I know there are less popular journals written about this period and the suffering,but somehow,it seems fateful that Ann's would be the one to become a legend.Even the fact that there exists a brief moving film clip of her out on the balcony waving, when at that time there wasn't much personal family filming,that seems to reinforce my thinking that hers was a purpose of example.
In such a short life,she suffered everything you could think of.Isolation,no friends,little food and finally starvation,disease and death in those camps.
Her pre-war life was lavish,both mother and father were wealthy and Ann seemed spoiled and had many friends making it all the more harder to go from wealthy and popular school girl to a life in hiding,with limited food and clothing and fresh air.Instead she looks to the future and herhope of freedom after the war is over.
Other children might become extremely depressed and feel doomed and hopeless.
Her father making sure the children continued their studies of algebra,language and providing them with books and other things to keep the children must have helped alot.Her flirtation and deepening feelings for Peter probably helped her cope too.
When I read things like "she was nothing special" and "it's only because her diary was found" that she became celebrated makes me wonder how people that say those things would manage in the same situation.
Anyway, I'm glad schools have children read the book and learn about the insane,dismal consequences of categorizing people of any race and religious belief.
The unbelievable and unthinkable did happen and I'm grateful that Ann had written her journal and that it is still so widely read.
Dear Kitty August 20, 2007
Edwin C. Pauzer (New York City)
30 out of 33 found this review helpful
An innocuous gift, a diary a girl treasures. She writes in it, "I will call you, Kitty." A scrawny teenage girl begins writing her way into the hearts and minds of mankind around the world. This book will be her legacy and her memorial.
Her family, refugees from Germany, immigrates to Holland where the boots of nazi oppression and psychopathic poison are not far behind. Ann's family hides from the invader in an attic where the Dutch who are the antithesis of German intolerance give them meager rations.
Ann's writing tells us about herself, and her relations with her family and the van Danns cramped in an attic always starving, and never being sure when they will be brought food, or if the police will find them. Through the turmoil of maturation from girl to woman,we learn of a girl's decency, innocence, and goodness.
All the hope for freedom is gone as the police discover the hide-out, and Ann is taken to a concentration camp where she dies two months before its liberation. Going back to the attic, her father finds her diary that will bring her immortality. Her legacy begins.
We all would have wanted to see Ann Frank and thousands of other like her live. No one, especially a young innocent girl should be treated so inhumanly without the least iota of mercy or decency. The irony is that her seemingly meaningless death among millions is what gave her life meaning, and allowed her story to be told to the world.
This book is a reminder that love and kindness survives the most vile lack of humanity. It is a testament to the human spirit.
Ann Frank would have been seventy-eight June 12, 2007.
Young Girl Knows More than Most April 27, 2000
Brandon Cheney (Peoria, IL, USA)
26 out of 33 found this review helpful
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl tells of a young Jewish girl's experiences through adolescence in the midst of World War II and Hitler's genocide against her people. On her thirteenth birthday, she was given a diary in which to write her thoughts and feelings. She, her family, the Van Daan family, and Dr. Dussel tried to adjust to life in the Secret Annexe. Her diary, which she named Kitty, was written from her heart with no superficiality. This makes reading it a great experience. She discussed in the book many issues prevalent in her life as a Jew. She talked about the Zionist movement and the hardships Jews endured in Nazi Germany. They could only shop in certain stores designated for Jewish use. She wrote about her father and sister's fear of deportation, which would have almost definitely resulted in going to a deadly concentration camp. It is a good read because of the way it intertwines childhood and the Holocaust and speaks of both candidly. She wrote about her feelings and encounters with friends and family. She let out her anger at Hitler and described the new reforms that made her life much harder. She thought she had found a good friend in Kitty. Little did she know that one day her story would impact thousands around the world, even if she was only a young girl.
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