I also read and still have copies of her father’s, Otto Frank, autobiography as well as that of one of the helpers, Miep Gies. So, I was very interested in reading this graphic novel adaptation of Anne Frank’s Diary.
The adaption begins in 1942 with
13-year-old Anne living an ordinary life in the Netherlands. After she receives
a diary for her birthday, she declares it her best friend and names it, Kitty.
Anne Frank and her parents,
Otto and Edith Frank, and her sister Margot have moved to the Netherlands from
Germany because of the Nazi’s rise to power and the worsening treatment of the Jewish
people. After the Nazis occupy the Netherlands, and to escape being sent to
work or concentration camps, the family hides at Otto Frank’s office behind a
bookcase which leads to a secret annex.
They are joined by Mr and Mrs
van Daan and their son Peter. Anne’s parents and Margot share a bedroom and Anne
has a small room to herself until Albert Dussel, one of the helpers’ dentist,
also moves into hiding with them.
The adaptation had to omit
and condense many of the diary entries, to make it work as an illustrated
version, but the edited text gives a good insight into Anne’s thoughts and struggles
and what it was like for her in sharing a confined space for two years.
Anne astutely and with great self-awareness
describes her thoughts and feelings including comparisons made between herself
and her sister Margot, her struggles with her mother, her love for her father,
her observations of the other housemates and later her evolving romance with
Peter as well as her feelings of fear and depression.
Anne’s humour shines
throughout, including her thoughts on Mrs van Daan’s obsession with her chamber
pot.
The diary gives an insight
into the Nazi-occupied Netherlands, the hardships and poverty and prosecution
of people from Jewish descent as well as the dependency of those hiding on their
helpers and the dangers they faced in keeping the people in the annex safe and
fed.
If reading this book with
younger children, be aware that this adaptation also includes Anne’s candid and
unabridged thoughts and feelings as a sexually developing woman.
The illustrations show the
décor, fashion and living conditions of the time, as well as capturing Anne’s
fears and dreams in a more surrealistic illustrative style. The illustrations are often
interspersed with pages of longer unillustrated
diary entries.
The afterword explains how
Dutch Security Police arrested the families and briefly relates their various
fates including Anne and Margot’s death at concentration camp Bergen-Belsen
from a typhus epidemic in 1945 not long before the end of the war.
I will be using this graphic adaption
of Anne Frank’s Diary with my children as a jumping-off point to
discussing WWII from a Dutch (European) perspective and to continue discussions
around broader themes such as racism and nationalism.
I highly recommend this
graphic adaption.
Title: Anne Frank’s Diary: The
Graphic Adaptation
Author: Adapted by Ari Folman
Illustrator: David Polonsky
Publisher: Viking, $29.99
Publication Date: 2 October 2018
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780241978641
For ages: 10+
Type: Graphic Novel
