Customer Reviews

Anne Frank and Me

5 star:		(73)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The authors of ANNE FRANK AND ME have accomplished a phenomenal task. They have written a Holocaust novel that is deeply moving without being a depressing read. Like THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK itself, the ultimate message of Bennett & Gottesfeld's book is one of hope. Both books demonstrate that even in the midst of the most horrendous violations of human rights, good people still exist who can make a difference. Without trivializing the historical tragedy, both books paint three-dimensional portraits of real teenagers, just as concerned with fashion and dating as they are with whether they will live or die. This juxtaposition is refreshingly realistic. Nicole Burns is an average teenager, at times intolerant, boy-crazy, and uninterested in schoolwork. She, like most of the characters in this book, is not 100% good nor 100% evil. In a misguided effort to be politically correct, some authors of historical fiction make their characters sinners or saints, leaving the reader with the impression that she could never relate to these larger-than-life people. But teens will identify with Nicole. They will realize that the Holocaust happened to ordinary people like themselves, and that it could happen again. This story will hook even reluctant readers with its humor and up-to-date setting, including Nicole's own website. Nicole's time-travel to Paris in 1942 is believably handled. Events become gradually more intense, so that by the time Nicole is in real danger, readers who would not normally choose a "serious," "educational" book will keep reading to find out what happens next. You will cry. You will also smile. You will definitely think and learn. What more could you ask from a book?

The more you know about the Nazi occupation of Paris, France, and the checkered French response to it, the more you will understand what a remarkable feat authors Bennett and Gottesfeld have accomplished in a book ostensibly for young adults. This book, full of the adolescent longing, romance, and expression of young sexuality that marks Anne Frank's own diary, is a veritable Sophie's Choice for teens. If only all historical fiction for young people could be this powerful. There are three main reasons for Anne Frank and Me's power. First, every teen (and this adult reader) will come to fall in love with the authors' heroine, a modern Christian tenth grader named Nicole, who describes herself accurately on her Girl X website as a "girl in the middle." She reminded me too much of too many of my own students, too distracted by the drama of their lives to do their homework. But under Nicole, and under my students, is a young woman who could change the world if only she'd let herself seize the day. Second, the authors' research is brilliant. Nazi-Occupied Paris comes to life as a teen would see it. Readers will understand all the major events, including the anti-Jewish laws, the yellow star decree, the July 1942 round-up of foreign-born Jews, the black market, the continuation of Paris' cultural life, the collaborationist press, the French fascist miltias, the killing of innocents in reprisal for acts of resistance.... It's all there. Both present and past are expertly rendered from a teen's eye view. The dialogue is crisp and idiomatic in the present, truthful in the past. The authors embrace Nicole, including the same romantic and erotic longings in her life that Anne Frank wrote about in her own diary. Nicole is in love with a boy who loves her. This love is reflected in her diary, as you might expect. Under the circumstances, knowing what we know about what is likely to come, it is both breathtaking and heartbreaking. Heartbreaking too is Nicole's chance meeting with Anne on a cattle car on the way to Birkenau. Parts of this book made me, a Christian teacher, shudder. I like to think that were I alive back then, I would have been another Miep Gies, doing everything I could to keep Nicole's--or Anne Frank's--family alive. I like to think I would have brought food to the Secret Annex. But who can deny that most of our Christian brethren were too worried about their own lives and too influenced by centuries of anti-Semitism to do what we could to protect our Jewish neighborhors? It made me uncomfortable to be confronted with this reality as I read. But so be it. The point of reading is not to be made comfortable. Lastly, this book is a great read, full of plot twists and turns that defied my best efforts to guess what was coming next. I read it in a single sitting, something I haven't done with a young adult novel since Speak. Whether you're a teen or a parent or a teacher or a grandparent, put Anne Frank and Me on your reading list, somewhere near the top. You will glad you did.

Anne Frank and Me is one of the best books I have ever read. I couldn't put it down. It captured my attention from the beginning because I connected with the main character Nicole. She thought that nothing could go right for her. Come to find out when she entered the life of a Jewish girl nothing was going right there either. This book had so many twists that I had to finsih it while sitting at the dining room table with my whole family watching me...that is how good it was.

Though this book is a quick, easy read, it contains information and graphic descriptions that make it difficult to put down. Although I am not a big fan of the writing (which reminds me I'm reading fiction and not REALLY there), I think the content is important.

This would make a great book to give kids some information about the Holocaust.

What does a mod, hip, Internet-surfing American teen-age girl have in common with a puberty-driven, would-be writer, icon-to-be, locked away in an early 1940s, Amsterdam, Holland, annex? Seemingly little, until their worlds merge on September 3, 1944, when both find themselves en route to the hell known as Auschwitz.

How does this all happen? Ah, therein lies the tale. And, with Cherie Bennett the spinner-driver and Jeff Gottesfeld the navigator, the reader is in for a wondrous ride indeed. ANNE FRANK AND ME unfolds in that ever-whimsical, ever-evolving world of teen angst. Nicole Burns is too busy for homework, for family, and nearly for historical truth. Only a sudden, bizarre incident saves Nicole from going down the road of Holocaust denial.

The journey Nicole takes as her Jewish alter ego, though, is rough, shocking, and tortuous, even though, ultimately, liberating. Nicole Bernhardt finds 1942 Paris a world of Jewish restriction, harassment, and, eventually, confinement. Within the dual Nicoles, though, a gleam of realization begins to dawn. The new Nicole perceives, correctly, that those who do not seek to find the truth are bound, in some measure, to suffer from that failure. When Nicole encounters Anne, Nicole's words are measured, for she knows then the truth in a way that Anne Frank cannot.

No young reader can walk away from this book unchanged, anymore than Nicole could escape her ultimate fate. Historical truth, even in a fictional world, demanded it. (Bill Younglove, Mandel Fellow, 1999-2000)

I think this book is a really great oppertunity to learn about the Holocaust and at the same time (for girls), to feel the same way that the main character does.She's just an average(?) 16 year old girl. She starts out at the 21st century, and ends up in 1942!In this book , you'll meet anne frank, and some made up characters that play a huge role. this book (by a 10-year old's point of view)Is a book that everybody should read.By the way-Even though I'm 10 years old, I reccomend this book to 12 and up peoples, because of innapropriatte language and other stuff like that.

Anne Frank and Me was one of the the best books that I have ever read. It was so realistic I could easily been right in the book. It was heartwarming, yet suspensful. Anne Frank and Me really had a way to touch your heart. It creates such a picture in your mind of what the struggle so many jewish children had to go through everyday during the war even though they had done nothing wrong. I reccomend this book to anyone who loves a good well written, heartfelt book. Anyone who is interested in historical fiction or has an interest in world war two, this book is the right one for you.

I am 12 years old and before I read this book the holocast used to just be a "thing" that happened. It used to be "so cool" that bazillions of jews got killed, but after reading this book, my mind is forever changed. The book starts out with something I can relate to-- a computer savy 15 yearold with an annoying younger sister views the holocast as a "thing"--. This captures my attention and incouraged me to read something other that my Harry Potter books. <--- very unusual for me! So NE ways when this girl went back in time, everything felt so real, sometimes I forgot I was me and it felt like I was there. It told the scary truth about being arrested, going into hiding, watching people die, and then watching you and your little sister die. At the end I actually cried it seemed so real. I have read many books about the holocast over the years, and this is by far my absolute fave!!! READ IT!

For those of you who read the Publisher's Weekly review or the short summary and thought, "forget this," I really hope you give this book a chance.

When I first picked it up, I didn't expect much; it was more of a last minute choice for a long, boring vacation. This soon changed. It first drew me in with Nicole's character, which is undeniably and genuinely teenage. She's rather plain, writes a blog no one reads with surprising insight about her existence and crush on one unattainable Jack, and is extremly, extremely self-centered. This ugly side of Nicole, the one that cares more about her nonexistent love life than a classroom session with a concentration camp survivor, is so real that any teenager would feel an instant connection. It's not exactly a good thing, but it gives the book and its heroine a certain attractiveness.

When Nicole finds herself French, Jewish, and living in the Paris of World War II, the tone changes drastically. Yes, she finds a French version of Jack who actually loves her (Since the third grade! Admittedly, this relationship is a bit ridiculous and hard to swallow), and yes, her character appears to be just as silly and romance-driven as ever, but this happiness does not last for long. Nicole personally experiences the pain, drama, and heartache she used to read about as FutureAmericanNicole, and that she used to brush off as a part of the unimportant past. Her adventure allows her to find courage in not only others, such as the infamous Anne Frank and the fictional Paulettes, but also herself. Our heroine grows throughout the story, and, clichéd as this may sound, we grow with her.

From reading some of the other reviews, I have to agree that the most significant and poignant part of the novel was when Nicole assures Anne Frank that she would one day become a writer, and break a million hearts. It sums up Anne's significance and her character in a way that makes her more than just a girl who wrote that tome of a diary we all had to read in school. I loved the way the writers (or playwrights, rather) were able to incorporate Anne's dream of being famous and sought by many into something so ironically tragic, and the power it gave to the book was enormous.

To be honest, "Anne Frank and Me" is one of the first solid, non-chick-lit books I've picked up from the library in a while. As a teenage girl attending a rigorous exam school, I tend to stray away from the 'heavier' type of books I always have to read for English, and stick with light-hearted and comical reads. Yet, I'm glad I gave this book a chance. Truthfully, I stuck with it initially because there was an unrequited romance and surprisingly true reflections about life from Nicole. You know, the things that you feel and want to convey, but couldn't put into words until someone else did. As I read on, however, the romance and the boys in Nicole's life took a backseat to the real issue: the horror of the Jewish situation in WWII. The book succeeds in not boring or scaring away younger readers with merely historical facts and numbers, but allowing them to *want* to know what happened, and care about the people it happened to.

I guess, after all the wordy rambling, what I'm really trying to say is, this book deserves your time. It is not a dense, stereotypically dark read, and it is not a facetious look at atrocity. It is a story about a girl, who, like many others, became immune to the horrors of the past because of the regularity with which it is pounded into young heads at school, only to rediscover on a much more significant level how those events cannot be ignored.

Older people will undoubtedly find this a gem, but I personally think that teenagers are the ones who NEED to read this book. So many of us are like the Nicole at the beginning of the book, when we really need to be the Nicole at the end.

This book is very difficult to put down. The main character imagines herself transported back in time to war torn France, where she experiences the struggles of a Jewish family under German occupation. The authors accomplish something which many pieces of young reader's fiction about the Holocaust fail to do. They make it clear that people about whom we care were murdered. Often, the genre of Holocaust literature for young readers is about heroic rescuers and near escapes. These authors dare to do the painful, to create a character we admire and love and to allow her to share the fate of one and a half million Jewish children. The book is a compelling yet easy read. The main character is wonderfully engaging and very believable. History is included so subtly that children will learn it without knowing it. The authors tackle the issue of deniers and revisionists brilliantly.