I find it almost shameful that it took me till my 30s to get to this book. It was quite surprising in some ways the perfectly average and joyful, though moody teenager Anne was. She's insightful every now and then, humorous, and deep in the teenage angst of removing herself from her mother and making attachments elsewhere. What a resilient girl in the face of such extreme strife to remain so ordinary. ( )

Independent, reading level grade 6, and up
Information book ages 9+

Growing up in the buckle of the Bible belt, I was never assigned this book in Social Studies or English classes. I once asked why, only to be told that the discussions on sexuality & biology were too graphic. That's malarky. This is a fine work that every young person should read.

The consensus is accurate: she writes about being a teenager with remarkable clarity. But what's fascinating is her detailing of a situation that is alien to so many people. Her life in hiding as well as her details of the war are given great emotional and informational context. I'm saddened by thinking about what could have been, as her recurring dream of becoming a journalist was apt. She had an amazing ability to report information to someone in a profound way.

I picked this book up a few weeks after the start of the conflict between Israel and Hamas. And I'm struck by how many of her commentary on international politics (which she was reticent to discuss) still ring true. What's worse, is that I can't help but think of the countless young people in Israel or Gaza, (like those before them in cotton fields, sweat shops, or war torn territories), who because of injustice will never be able to share their thoughts to the world.

A justifiable classic. ( )

Incredibly poignant and sad, it really makes you think about how short life can be. It's beautiful how she still manages to see things positively right up until the end. ( )

This review is to mark my reaction to the book at this moment in time. It is by no means definitive. Like many other American kids, I read this as a school assignment at a young age. Plenty of adaptations, seemingly, were assigned of it over the years, too. In eighth grade, we read and positively analyzed a play adaptation. It portrayed Anne and her family as really religious. They weren't, in the way the play portrayed them. I remember being annoyed and unsettled by the artistic liberties taken. Years later, I watched a much more faithful and realistic to the source dramatic miniseries made out of her diary. I had watched part of it on TV when it first came out, but had nightmares from the trailers alone. It was uploaded to Youtube years later and that's when I watched it in its entirety. Everything about it was terrific, and my jaw dropped when I saw Hannah Taylor Gordon. After I finished the series, I just...sat there for half an hour. Just sat. Couldn't tell you my feelings. These adaptations, whether close to the source or not too much, are keeping her story and memory still alive. I'm grateful for that. The book is still in print, is assigned reading in schools, and hopefully it stays that way.

This--it--there's--see, me being flustered is why I didn't try to review it until now. I was surprised at how many things were around in 1942 that I thought were contemporary and specific to America alone: grading systems using letters and integers (A-, B+), Montessori schools, Zionism...Zionism did not mean the same thing in 1942 as the sociopolitical war zone it is today. I thought it came about in the 50s. I know a former Montessori school teacher who switched to an Orthodox Jewish school and cheerfully noted she didn't need a transition. That surprised me, as I think of the two as so different. She switched careers entirely, but was still worried about, "Was I a good teacher?" I answered her questions about Judaism as best I could, and explained I wasn't Orthodox. I reassured her that you don't have to be Jewish, just willing to teach the kids, and how much it mattered that she still wondered if she'd taught well.

I'd mixed up my historical timelines in the years since reading this: I thought this took place in 1940 somehow, and by 1942, it was...over. No. I thought, I thought, and reading this again helped refresh my knowledge. Restrictions for so many things had already been in place, but more were to come. Concentration camps were commonplace, and were continuing. People were already being taken away. And yet, many were trying to live normally.

It is noted in the introduction to the diary that Anne's father omitted several passages that portrayed family members in an unflattering manner. She was a young teenager. It's normal. And he did the same with some passages that mentioned sexuality, which is understood now to mean "anything except heterosexuality," as Anne discussed boys freely in the diary. In the miniseries with Hannah Taylor Gordon, there's a scene with the sexuality Anne's father wasn't comfortable with: Anne asks her friend a few questions at a sleepover. That's it. I've always hand-waved the omissions as a father uncomfortable with his teenage daughter becoming a woman. There was a disgusting moment in 2019 where some of the queer community on Twitter decided Anne Frank would be a shining example to prove that children and teens aren't always heterosexual. These people were shocked and shrieked in outrage when queer Jews, myself included, confronted them in fury. Did you sit down and ask yourselves -why- you decided to use a DEAD JEWISH TEENAGER to try and prove a point to people who have shown they will not listen to you? You terrible people! There are so many other ways Anne Frank has been oversimplified and used in stupid ways to prove different points in history, and I want people to stop.

I can't imagine how scary it must have been to have to decide to, and subsequently go, into hiding. How boring and claustrophobic the attic must have been! And to have no other choice, and to be with people you knew of varying degrees, some of whom treated you with respect, and others who didn't. Who told the Gestapo about them? Why? I've always been curious and also dreaded finding out. Neither can I imagine or assign a proper vocabulary to the dread of knowing what awaited them at the camps. Or being transferred to different ones. Anne died two weeks before the camps were liberated. The misery and sadness has always stuck with me. The fact that the US turned away a shipful of people who were trying to escape, who were later to sent to camps as a result of the USA's callousness, has remained with me as well. ( )