The Diary of Anne Frank

The Diary of Anne Frank is one of my favorite books that I have read.  This was written by a young Jewish girl named Anne.  She is writing about her time in hiding from the Nazis during the Holocaust.  She, her family and others are hidden in an attic for some time. Unfortunately they are found, and taken to a concentration camp, where she later dies. 

This is such a great story for children to read.  When I read it, I was in middle school, and I fell in love with it.  This was one of the first times learning about the Holocaust and the terror of what it was.

This Diary of Anne Frank is known as a memoir.

Anne Frank  was born in 1929.  She wrote this Diary while she was in hiding, and spent over two years in the attic in Amsterdam.  Her diary was first published in 1947, and is one of the most powerful memoirs of the Holocaust. After Anne and her family were arrested by the Nazis in 1945, she died nine months later of typhus at the Bergan-Belsen concentration camp when she was fifteen.

http://www.carolhurst.com/subjects/biographies.html

Anne was such a brave girl, and should be and is an idol for many young girls and boys in the world.  This book shows young people that they too are strong, and capable of what ever they want.  even though she died in the Holocaust, she died a person that so many look up to!

Activities in the classroom:

If you have ever seen the movie Freedom Writers you would know that in the true story the teacher took her students to the Holocaust museum.  In this museum you get a picture of a person who was in the Holocaust, and when the tour is over you find out if they died or survived.  This may be hard for young students to do, because no one wants to know if someone has died or not.  But, I thought that if I taught this lesson to a class I would do something along the same line.

I would find individual pictures and names of survivors and give them to students.  They would then have time to find out their stories (on computers).  At the end of the class, I would ask what each student found out, and to tell the class one interesting fact about the survivor. 

Another thing that I might do is to have my students keep their own diaries for the time we stay on the lesson.  They would write in it every day, and tell me anything they wanted to. They could say what they did that day, how their day was, or even what they plan to do for the weekend.  This will help them know why Anne wrote her Diary.

Personal Response:
Like I have said, I love this book and think that it is a fantastic choice for students to read!