The Diary of a Young Girl

I bought this book when I was 15 but I waited until I was 17 to read it. I didn't force myself to wait two years, nor did I not want to read it, I just felt that reading Anne Frank's diary is something that needs to be appreciated; to be felt.I had just read a couple of books set during WWII and around the topic of the Holocaust ('The Book Thief' and 'The Boy in the Striped Pajamas') and just totally felt it was time to read Anne Frank's diary. And I am so glad I waited because I never would have got so much out of it if I had read it when I was younger and not in the right mindset to read it.Probably the most poignant thing about this book is not the fact that Anne is in hiding from the Nazis or in danger from being murdered, but that she is a normal teenage girl. She has all the feelings, the thoughts, the emotions that all teenagers - and I at the time of reading - feel so strongly at that age. Whilst reading it you can feel Anne grow up and come of age, and the way her feelings grow and mature as she ages. It is literally the exact same thing I felt during my teenage years. In fact, I felt so similar to Anne I could almost have been reading my own diary - apart from the rather focal Nazi part - and this is what affected me most about the diary. She often refers to "after the war" or "when I am a mother" or "when I have my own house", and these were the things I found particularly heartbreaking because they are things all teenage girls yearn for, and things that were stolen from her in the most cruel way.Of course, Anne Frank's diary is incredibly important as a cultural record because it tells you so much detail about actual life in Nazi Europe during the early 1940s, and that is history you cannot get from statistics and dates. The Holocaust is so important to learn about because it was such a horror that can never be repeated again, and the story of such an innocent, full-of-life girl reminds us of that.When you feel you are "of age" (in a sense), you CAN'T not read this book. It has befriended me and haunted me in so many ways. I love Anne and I mourn her, and all the other victims just like her, every time I think about the Holocaust. She is the representative for all the suffering that the Holocaust inflicted, and her diary makes you feel it in such an important way.

I can take the book with me when I travel and go to appointments as its compact size will fit in my bag. Always wanted to read this.

As much as we think we know about the horrors of the war, Anne's diary makes it all too real to bear at times.While she was not describing the concentration camps, we learn of a different type of sustained suffering through anxiety, fear, terror, hunger, desperation, physical, mental and even verbal imprisonment.There are many levels to this book, and one cannot escape the contrast between Anne's acute self-criticism and personal struggle in trying to be a "better, more tolerant person" while living under the oppressive shadow of monstrous human deformity.Anne's questioning the human spirit in every page she writes... the mind of a very young girl searching for answers that most of us don't even bother with the questions in the first place. And with that comes a candid innocence and nativity of a 13, 14 year-old girl.Pay attention to small details that sometimes reveal things Anne did not write into the diary, such as her father's mental breakdown and her own need of medication to cope with the situation. Things perhaps too painful to verbalise.Anne was only 14, but gosh, how beautifully she writes! This is an amusing, candid, courageous, philosophical and also mundane diary. I read certain parts more than once just to enjoy her sophisticated ability to play with words, her construction of a story, engaging the reader as if she was writing a novel. Astonishing achievement.All the more heartbreaking because, as you reach the last few pages, Anne reports the Allies are coming and becomes happier than ever, beaming with hope and belief in the future. Not once, ever, she lets fear overcome hope. Her plans to return to school makes very difficult reading.I went on to watch a few video interviews of Otto Frank and her half-sister Eva (from Otto's 2nd marriage). Somehow it helped me "escape" the torture of knowing what happened to her, listening her father explain how she "went on living after her death".

What a moving diary. This teenage girl had so much courage, a colourful way of writing, a clear view of the people crammed into the small space they were trapped in and a wonderful positive outlook on life despite the terrible war era she lived in. I say it again, I was moved by Anne Frank's diary.

La relación calidad/precio es muy buena. El libro ya lo conocía en español, pero sirve muchísimo en idioma inglés para el aprendizaje de este idioma.

Para quem quer aprender inglês, é indicado!

A very inspiring book. Must to be read by everyone

Doesn't make sense to review contents of the book on amazon, especially since it's a diary