Read this when
The Diary of a Young Girl
Stuck inside with her family, fighting with her mom, crushing on the boy upstairs, and writing it all to 'Kitty'. Anne Frank was a teenager first.
Who it's for
Anne writes to 'Kitty', an imagined friend, because she feels she has no real confidante, and that act of writing is itself the model: a teenager using a diary to sort out rage, loneliness, crushes and ambition while trapped in the Secret Annex behind a movabl.
Feelings it meets
What it is
Anne Frank's diary, first published in Dutch in 1947 as Het Achterhuis, records her life from June 1942 to August 1944. Most of it was written while she, her family and four others hid from the Nazi occupation in the 'Secret Annex', sealed-off rooms behind a movable bookcase in her father Otto's company building in Amsterdam.
Where to find it
In print (Definitive Edition) and very widely available; libraries (Libby/Hoopla); audiobooks and a graphic diary adaptation available. English translations are still under copyright in the US.
Before you start
Heads up: Holocaust persecution and death.
Age: Ages 12+
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 2
