Big D Reads 2016 Examines the Holocaust
Hate. Hope. Persecution. Strength of the Human Spirit. Generosity and Betrayal in Wartime. These are the themes running throughout Anne Frank’s diary, a written warning to a future that still grapples with issues of hate and intolerance long after we should have learned the lessons of World War II and the Holocaust.
But beyond the circumstances of her life, Anne Frank also wrote of the common concerns of teenagers at any point in history: the inherent feeling of isolation and loneliness that consumes the adolescent years – struggling to reconcile your inward self with your outward self and feeling misunderstood by everyone closest to you. And 70 years later, students of a different century are still being assigned to read Anne Frank’s diary.
In partnership with the Dallas Holocaust Museum Center’s Anne Frank exhibit, Big D Reads is encouraging everyone to read The Diary of a Young Girl, Frank’s journal published two years after her death in a concentration camp in 1945. If you haven’t read it or thought much about it since school, Big D Reads will engage you in a reexamination of the diary and its themes that continue to enthrall readers. Special events, discussions, movie screenings, and children’s programming at libraries, schools and the museum throughout the month of April will encourage a deeper, shared experience with the literature.
To engage the entire Dallas community, we’ve selected three companion books that may better suit the reading levels and interests of some readers while touching on the same themes of The Diary of a Young Girl: Dr. Seuss’s The Sneetches, Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars, and Erik Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts. There are multiple copies of all these titles available for checkout at Dallas Public Library.
Read with us.