The Anne Frank House museum in Amsterdam announced that it is going to permanently display Anne Frank’s diary and writings to commemorate what would have been her 80th birthday today. (They hope to get everything up by November 1.)
It’s almost a tween rite of passage to read The Diary of Anne Frank. I remember getting so attached to Anne, who wrote so honestly about her love for her father, her conflicts with her mother, and her budding crush on the only boy around in "The Secret Annex" — Peter. ("The Secret Annex" was the hidden room in her father’s office building in Amsterdam where her family hid during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.) You read her writing with the impossible wish that she will grow up to live the adult life she so passionately anticipates in her diary.
"I want to go on living even after my death," Anne wrote in her diary. Although she died of typhus at 15 at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, The Diary of Anne Frank made her wish come true.
Did you read The Diary of Anne Frank? What did you like best about it?
Milly
Maison Martin Margiela
Rizzo
Not the whole thing sadly but I enjoyed the part that I read. Very smart little girl and I love her vocabulary.
1I read it years ago in grammar school. It was a great book, very sweet and a little disturbing at the same time.
2My parents gave me the extended version with all kinds of background information about her life and different passages from different translations when I was 12...loved it and read it over and over again. I'm still baffled by the fact that she was able to make the war seem so unimportant and yet so present. Reading the diary wasn't even the most shocking part...visiting the 'Achterhuis' and seeing how she lived was.
3Yes, I did many, many moons ago.
What struck me about her diary was how earnest,
sweet, and sincere she was.
With that said, I think many teenage girls are that way. It's adolescence. I came across some of my old diaries (from junior high, high school, and college), and I had the same tone she had. It's about passion and naivete. It's a phase we all go through.
4I never read it but I plan to.
5Yep, years ago. I just loved how real she was about everything, and how sincere. It was sweet.
6I grew up reading her diary.
"It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart."
If only more people felt like her.
7I read it a long time ago. And ladybug's quote from the diary is the one that got to me, because after all that she has endured, she still believed that. Eli Wiesel's Night is also one of the best read beside Anne Frank's.
I remember reading these books and just couldn't stop bawling while reading them.
8Going on about 12 times now.... once each year since I was 10.
9I read it in its entirety when I was in high school, and read parts of it this year with my fifth graders. Several of them were very upset to learn that she died in the end, and that it didn't have a happy ending, which prompted an excellent discussion of maybe it is a happy ending because "kids like us still get to know her through her diary." LOVE it.
10I've read the Definitive version several times, as well as her short stories. Just love this girl.
11Yes, I read it many years ago. What struck me most about what this young girls maturity.
sassy - that sounds so much like what they said about it in the movie "Freedom Writers". I imagine alot of people have the same reaction.
12Yup. I've read it quite a few times when I was a child. I still remember the diary even now. It's one of those books that really stay with you as you grow up.
I agree with Nevaeh about 'Night', as well! I read it, and I couldn't put down the book till it was over!
13yes i did in middle school. since we were about the same age, i related to her so much. i was heartbroken when i got to the end of the book a realized she died. i was rooting for her.
14It was on my summer reading list for entering 6th grade...I was transferring from public to private school and thought the whole summer reading thing was a real drag...but I read it and just loved it. I think it may have been the only book I read that summer...
15it was part of my 4th grade reading list and being a kid that time, i couldn't help but cried and cried after reading the book.. it made me realize (at such a young age, lol) that i have so much to offer to the world and i shouldn't take my blessings for granted.. i love that Anne was able to include the bitterness of war in the sideline even if the diary is all about her going-through-teenage phase.. it made me laugh, cry, shout and smile all at the same time, just reading her diary.. aside from The Little Prince, this is my fave book of all time!
16I read it a long time ago. Very moving, sweet and sad at the same time.
17I read it ages ago when I was a teenager and back in 2002, visited the house with the Secret Annexe, in Amsterdam. It was absolutely heartbreaking. My boyfriend and I were shocked into silence for hours after we left.
18Many times. I too had the "extended" version. I remember several of the entries. I should read it again, come to think of it...
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