10 Days: Anne Frank by David Colbert

From the front cover:

Anne Frank lived 5,748 days. These 10 days shook her world--and yours.

It's been many years since I first read Anne Frank's diary, and I don't remember any of the specifics. David Colbert's 10 Days: Anne Frank, which I read with The Girl, refreshed my memory. Colbert focuses on Anne Frank's very short life, from the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands and the letter that sent her family into hiding to the arrest of the occupants of the Secret Annex and Anne's death from typhus in the Bergen-Belsen camp.

In telling the Franks' story, Colbert focuses on what they might have been feeling. For instance, Otto is shown contemplating his decision not to send his daughters, Anne and Margot, to live with a cousin in England when he had the chance. Colbert also details the laws imposed by the Nazis to prevent the Jews from living normal lives. They weren't allowed to own bikes or ride in cars, and they couldn't go to the movies or stay out past dark. They were forced to wear yellow stars on their clothing to identify themselves as Jews, and to add insult to injury, they had to pay "four cents and one clothes ration coupon" (page 25) for each star.

Anne and her family were in hiding when she wrote in her diary on July 15, 1944, "...in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." This quote stuck out to me, showed a bit of hope in a bleak situation. However, it was written before she experienced the horrors of the concentration camps, and I wonder what her post-war diaries would have said had she survived.

I've studied a lot about World War II, the Nazi party, and the Holocaust, so much of the details provided in the book weren't new to me, but The Girl had a real eye-opening experience. The book is geared toward 8- to 13-year olds, and I think Colbert does a great job describing the horrible things the Nazis did in a way that children can understand without being scared to sleep at night. By telling the story of one Jewish girl, Anne Frank, he puts a face on the six million Jews who were killed, underscoring the fact that these were ordinary people living ordinary lives before being singled out by a racist regime.

This was the first The Girl had heard of Anne Frank, so she was unaware of Anne's fate. Upon reading the final chapters, she had tears in her eyes. She saw Anne as a young girl like herself with a passion for writing, a vivid imagination, and it's hard for anyone to comprehend her senseless death. I'm glad I was able to share this book with her, as she had a lot of questions. I only wish I had some words of wisdom for her when she asked why these things occurred. It just didn't seem like enough of an explanation to say Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and the likes were lunatics. No matter how many books I read about the Holocaust, I'm always haunted by the stories and the pictures, and I myself have wondered many times why such atrocities were allowed to happen.

10 Days: Anne Frank is a short, but powerful book and a good way to introduce older children to an important part of world history.

******

Here's what The Girl (age 8) had to say about 10 Days: Anne Frank by David Colbert:

I learned a lot about the Holocaust from this book. I learned how horrible Auschwitz and other concentration camps were, and how bad the Jewish people were treated. I learned a lot about Anne Frank. She liked writing in her diary and watching movies like me. My mom and I were sad when we read that she died in the camp. I thought this was a good book because it taught me a lot. It made Anne Frank seem real to me, and I want to read her diary some day.

******

We read 10 Days: Anne Frank by David Colbert as part of the WWII reading challenge at War Through the Generations.

******

10 Days: Anne Frank also was reviewed by:

Peeking Between the Pages

If you've also reviewed it, let me know in the comments, and I'll add your link!

Disclosure:  We received 10 Days: Anne Frank as a gift.