Anne Frank

 

Anne Frank by Josephine Poole

Illustrated by Angela Barrett

Grade level 4-8

Genre: Biography

Have you ever been picked on or bullied? How would you feel if people hated you just because you were different? That’s how Anne Frank felt every day for many years. This is the story of a brave young girl and her family who had to live everyday in fear, knowing that it could be their last.

            The story of Anne Frank has been published in various ways. Her actual diary written during WW2 was also published for people to read. This story called Anne Frank is the juvenile version of her life as a Jew in Germany during the war. The story begins when Anne was a baby. She was always screaming and making sure she was heard. She grew up in a great family who loved her very much. Due to the poverty in Germany, her dad was one of the few people with a job. Then things became horrible. She began to be bullied at school and not allowed to sit with her non Jew friends in the classroom. The story goes onto talk about the leader of Germany, Hitler, who began to spread terrible lies about the Jewish people. This started a rebellion and people lashed out against the Jews. Anne and her family had to go into hiding. The story continues on about the life Anne and her family had to live while in hiding and what happened when their hiding place was revealed. When her father’s secretary discovered that they had been taken away, she found Anne’s diary lying on the floor.

            This story is a biography about the life of Anne Frank. Most people, especially children, are turned off by the idea of biographies because they tend to be long and boring; this is not the case with this book. Anne Frank is a great biography to keep in a classroom as well as make sure the students know it is there. One thing that makes this biography fantastic is the pictures. They are very lifelike and show a lot of emotion in the faces of the characters. The use of dark and dull colors emphasizes the mood of the story and how people felt during the war. The book begins with an excerpt from Anne’s actually diary. Another aspect of this book that makes it a great biography is its use of “story language”. Rather than throwing a lot of facts at the reader, the author wrote is like a narrative or any other book a student might read. On the last page of the book, the author includes a paragraph explaining where Anne’s diary went after the war. She also talks about how people visit Anne’s house often, along with the contact info on where to find it, a number to call, and a website to visit. Below this paragraph, she included a timeline of the war beginning in 1918, intertwined with Anne’s life, and ending with the death of her father in 1980. The information used in this story was cited on the copyright page.

            I would absolutely use this book in a classroom. I have always been very interested in studying WW2 and the holocaust and I would love to be able to teach students about the war and what it was like to live during those times. This story could easily be connected across the curriculum. First of all, depending on the state’s frameworks, this story could be used in a social studies class. Second, it could be used in an English or reading class when studying various genres; biographies in particular. Lastly, after pulling a few strings and twisting the curriculum a bit, I believe that it would be a fantastic story to read and analyze in a health class during a bullying lesson. That word (bullied) came up several times throughout the story. While facebook may not be the cause to the next world war, I feel as though it would be important to show children that bullying can happen on so many levels.

            This story meets the ELA reading standard MA.3 stating that 3 students should be able to describe in depth a character, setting, or event in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., a character’s thoughts, words, or actions). The illustrations alone would be able to help students meet this standard. It also meets standard MA8.A stating that students should be able to locate and analyze examples of similes and metaphors in stories, poems, folktales, and plays, and explain how these literary devices enrich the text. This story showed many examples of this. An example of a simile from the story would be “her ears stuck out like a pixie” or “It was a love as sweet, and as fragile, as the flowers on the chestnut tree outside the window.