Anne Frank's Diary: The Graphic Adaptation

Possibly by now you've heard that Anne Frank's Diary: The Graphic Adaptation has been banned in many places. A substitute teacher was fired when she presented part of the book to her class. After that, I figured I had to read this book to figure out what is so controversial about Anne Frank's Diary adapted into a cartoon form which is more accessible to many young people.

I just don't get it. The author, Ari Folman, had to figure out how he was going to adapt and basically abridge Anne Frank's diary without losing the most important parts of Anne's story. Lots of the tougher parts are the diary are told in just a few pages. One of the objections to the book is that it minimizes the gravity of the Holocaust. I don't think so! Yes, the author conveys that Anne, at the time the family went into hiding, was a normally young teen girl. She felt like she was walking in the shadow of her older "perfect" sister, Margot. She was a little boy crazy. And she was curious about her changing body. It seems like the bits of the book focused on these normal teen things and not the gravity of the Holocaust are what these crazy banners object to. What? When Anne walks through a park or museum with nude statues, they consider that pornography. Huh? When she wonders about what it would feel like to kiss a classmate, that's considered sexually explicit.

For the first years after the books publication, there were no objections. Now they seem to come one right after the other. It's ridiculous. If our children don't know our history, how are they going to be able to make any sense of the world? How will they go on to be productive citizens? My heart aches thinking of this graphic adaptation being banned. If parents are concerned about a book, then make it clear that they don't want their own child to read it. Don't prevent hundreds or thousands of other children from reading it.

I struggle to read books in graphic form but I'm glad that I took the time to read this. I needed to see what the fuss was. And I still don't understand it.