The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
Genre: Diary, non-fiction
Publication Date: 1947, this copy in 1993
Recommended Age Group: 12 and Up
Summary: The Diary of a Young Girl is the story of Anne Frank and her family as written by Anne herself. This Diary starts before the family goes into hiding and talks about the normal life and desires of Anne, a young girl in Holland, during the beginning of the war. Near the beginning of the book Anne and her family are forced to go into hiding because they are Jews and this was the time of the Holocaust and when Hitler was in power during WWII. While she is in hiding she writes about the daily life of what it is like to be a young Jew in hiding. She tells about the problems that she is having with the other people that are in hiding with her family and the problems she is having with her family. There are two families and a single man in hiding with them in the Secret Annex, which is the name of where they are. The Frank family, consisting of Anne’s parents and her sister Margot; the van Daans which consist of a husband and wife and their son Peter, and Albert Drussel, the single man. It talks about their life together in hiding and what they did on a day to day basis. Eventually Anne begins to spend a lot of time with Peter and they start to like each other. When the book ends they are still uncertain of their relationship but they are good friends and trust each other.
Personal Notes: I loved this book. I have wanted to read it for a long time but I have never taken the chance. It is interesting to me to see what it was like to be in hiding from the perspective of a young girl in Holland. I would defiantly recommend this book to anyone who shows even the slightest interest in World War II and the events that took place along with it. I would also recommend it to anyone who wanted to know what young girls think about. I thought it was a very accurate description and I remember thinking many of those same things when I was her age. I would not however, recommend it to young boys because it talks about feminine things and for the boys I know that would make them a bit uncomfortable and may ruin their experience with the book. If a boy shows the desire to read it I would certainly not hold him back I would just make sure that he understood everything that happened in the book so he didn’t come upon it as a surprise. Other than that I didn’t think the book had any problems and the good things about it far out way the problems it might have.