Multicultural/International Literature: The Diary of a Young Girl By: Anne Frank

           Anne’s diary begins on her thirteenth birthday, and ends shortly after her fifteenth. The Franks had moved to the Netherlands in the years leading up to World War II to escape persecution in Germany. After the Germans invaded the Netherlands in 1940, the Franks were forced into hiding. With another family, the van Daans, and an acquaintance, Mr. Dussel, they moved into a small secret annex above Otto Frank’s office where they had stockpiled food and supplies. The employees from Otto’s firm helped hide the Franks and kept them supplied with food, medicine, and information about the outside world. Anne eventually develops a close friendship with Peter van Daan, the teenage boy in the annex. Mr. Frank does not approve, however, and the intensity of Anne’s infatuation begins to lessen. Anne matures considerably throughout the course of her diary entries, moving from detailed accounts of basic activities to deeper, more profound thoughts about humanity. She finds it difficult to understand why the Jews are being singled out and persecuted. During the two years recorded in her diary, Anne deals with the complicated and difficult issues of growing up in the brutal circumstances of the Holocaust. Anne’s diary ends  on August 1, 1944, the end of a seemingly normal day that leaves us with the expectation of seeing another entry on the next page. However, the Frank family is betrayed to the Nazis and arrested on August 4, 1944. 

           I think that this is a very important text that children should read at LEAST once during their pubic schooling. This is obviously a very authentic example of multicultural and international literature. In this text, children get to empathize with a young Jewish girl who lives in Europe during Nazi reign. I would use this book to discuss the horrors of the holocaust to my children. I don't think that children see the holocaust as a real thing until they see what a child, like Anne, went through. I would definitely do activities like talking back to the text and group discussions to get kids to respond to this text on an emotional level. If they learn no literacy skills from reading this text, I hope that they learn about how dangerous race and other types of discrimination can be in our society.