Anna Is Still Here [Paperback]

Ida Vos (Author), Terese Edelstein (Translator), Inez Smidt (Translator)

Book Description

Age Level: 8 and up | Grade Level: 3 and up

Thirteen-year-old Anna, who was a "hidden child" in Nazi-occupied Holland during World War II, gradually learns to deal with the realities of being a survivor.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Vos's autobiographical Hide and Seek ranks among the best middle grade fiction about the Holocaust; this story, a sequel of sorts, is even better. Anna, a Dutch Jewish girl, has survived the war in hiding. She returns to school--a fifth-grader although she's 13--and is reunited with her parents, who cannot yet bring themselves to tell her about their own ordeal (they spent years in a forest, living below the ground). She knows a little about the concentration camps--enough to be aware that her best friend has been murdered in one--and she struggles to accommodate her knowledge, her sense of her parents' vulnerability, her own deeply inculcated terrors and her eagerness to rejoin the world. Vos conveys Anna's heartbreaking and heroic efforts with exemplary economy, and the anguish of Anna's story is balanced by a subplot, however contrived, about another survivor being reunited against all odds with her seven-year-old daughter. Vos looks beyond the usual "happy" ending of survivor stories, which typically conclude with liberation or shortly thereafter, to pose more thoughtful questions about the price of survival; her answers are hard-won and profoundly stirring. Ages 8-12.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

The author of the autobiographical novel Hide and Seek (1991), based on her own WW II experiences, again uses linked vignettes to evoke the painful difficulties, after the war, of resuming a normal life. Anna, 13, has just emerged from three years of hiding, during which she rarely spoke; she still imagines that a figure lurking behind a curtain in a nearby house is a Nazi, and she has nightmares fueled by the terrible things she knows her parents are keeping from her. The earliest scenes- -Father patiently coaxing Anna to speak loudly again; Anna discovering that the dreaded figure is actually Mrs. Neumann, another Jewish survivor, whose whole being is focused on the hope that her little daughter, Fannie, may be alive--are among the strongest and most telling. Others, depicting the prejudice still rife in Holland and the sometimes callous lack of sympathy for Jewish survivors, as well as the bitterness toward collaborators and the legal support available against racism, are vividly authentic. Weakest is Mrs. Neumann's reunion with Fannie; such miracles did occur, but this one seems contrived, while the focus wavers when it leaves Anna; moreover, the pain in parting Fannie and her foster parents is mentioned but not really addressed. Still, a compelling book, even stronger than its fine predecessor. (Fiction. 8-14) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 8 and up
  
• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Puffin (March 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140369090
• ISBN-13: 978-0140369090
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,862,999 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #94 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Children's Books > History & Historical Fiction > Fiction > Holocaust

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What happened after 'Hide and Seek' ended, August 8, 2004

By 

Anyechka (Rensselaer, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Anna Is Still Here (Paperback)

Though there are different characters and plotlines, this book easily could have been the sequel to 'Hide and Seek.' The Markus family have survived by being in hiding and, once the War ended, wanted to stay in their home country of Holland. Thirteen year old Anna spent the War in hiding in the attic room of Daniel De Bree, who gives trumpet lessons, while her parents hid under the ground in a forest. The three of them are deeply affected by what they went through; Anna knows enough to know that Marga, her best friend, died in a concentration-camp, along with many of her relatives and other friends, but doesn't know all of the details she wants to know, and her parents refuse to provide any. They won't even tell her where they were during the War. Her father Simon is the more wound-up of her parents; for a very long time he won't let her display a picture of Marga they still have, since he doesn't want to see pictures of murdered people. He also yells a lot, since they haven't been a family in so long he isn't used to anything but being angry, tense, and suspicious. And both of them are angry and upset over Anna's new friendship with a German woman who lives near them, Frau Neumann, thinking that because of her German name she must be a Nazi. At first Anna thought so too, but soon found out Frau Neumann was also Jewish, and was so drawn to her because she looked exactly like her little daughter Fannie, right down to the birthmark on her forehead.

Because her parents are unable and unwilling to talk, Anna goes to Frau Neumann to talk about the War, being in hiding, missing people who are no longer there, the things they have to put up with from people who cannot fathom what they had to go through since they weren't there. She has a very quiet voice from being in hiding, since she barely spoke at all when Mr. De Bree was hiding her, and has been put into the fifth grade despite her age, due to the years of school she missed while in hiding. She can't even answer most of the questions the other students ask her, and she doesn't like to talk about it even if she does know. And even though Holland was one of the relatively friendly and safe places during WWII (there were more people willing to hide Jews and to be in the underground and Resistance than in a place like Poland or Hungary), there are still painful echoes of anti-Semitism to be dealt with.

Some people might find the ending unrealistic and contrived, but it's not like that sort of thing never happened in real life. There are enough sad real-life stories where no happy reunions between separated family members took place; why not have a happy ending when you're working with fictional characters, the kind of happy ending that too often didn't happen in real life?

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A touching story that moved me deeply, May 11, 2000

By 

Steffie (United States of America) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Anna Is Still Here (Paperback)

I thought that "Anna Is Still Here" by Ida Vos was a moving novel that told a story of a Jewish family torn apart during the war and their struggle after the completion of the war. Ida Vos gave such realistic personality traits to each character that I found myself feeling a strange closeness to each. It seemed the more I read the more I felt each characters' emotions. I highly recommend this novel to anyone that enjoys piercingly realistic stories and also to those that like to read books that touch your heart and your soul and leave you a changed person.

5.0 out of 5 stars anna is still here, January 17, 2010

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Anna Is Still Here (Paperback)

I think the book( Anna Is Still Here) is a story that can inspire all different people it shows how hard a war can be for people and that it really affects their lives and how they live. I really liked this book it is one of my favorite books. I liked it because Anna shows that things aren't always going to end up perfect and that you can't judge somebody until you now more about them then their name.