Excellent background on the diary and its fame and on Anne Frank. I learned that the diary was not as clear-cut as I thought. Her father edited it and part was from another account she wrote. It's still a powerful witness of the Holocaust. ( )

Well written book comparing the 3 versions of Anne's diary. ( )

The first section of this book looks at the life of Anne Frank. In part two, Prose takes a critical look at Frank as a writer and addresses the reception history of Frank’s diary. In part three, Prose examines the way that the diary has been taught at levels from elementary school through university. Prose concludes with her own experience teaching a seminar on Anne Frank at Bard College. The controversy over the play and film versions of the diary was new to me. Prose does a thorough job of analyzing the controversy and the personalities involved. This book belongs in all libraries that own a copy of Anne Frank’s diary. It should be background reading for instructors preparing to teach students of any level about Anne Frank and her diary. ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2421391.html

Has a lot of useful detail on how the Diary came to be written and published, and also some unedifying details about the creation of the Broadway play, the movie, and its use by revisionists, but I recommend it as a book anyway. ( )

THIS IS A REVIEW OF FRANCINE PROSE'S BOOK ON THE DIARY, NOT ON THE DIARY ITSELF - THE FORMER'S REVIEWS HAVE BEEN MERGED WITH THE LATTER:

This book is an analysis of Anne Frank's diary as a work of literature, particularly comparing the three different versions - a (the original version she wrote day by day), b (the revised version she rewrote in mid 1944 after Dutch Minister Bolkestein's radio call for Dutch citizens to preserve their wartime reminiscences for posterity, which reflects her maturing views as a 15 year old rather than a 13 year old) and c (the synthesis of a and b and which was the original published version in 1947). It also analyses the 1950s Broadway and Hollywood versions of the diary - the bitter arguments over their purpose and the best approach to their presentation, especially over the former, make for unedifying reading. Though not nearly so unpleasant as the (mercifully) quite short chapter about the attempts of Holocaust deniers to try to show the diary was a hoax. The book concludes with some reflections by the author on the challenges and opportunities teaching Anne Frank to students. I wasn't always convinced by the author's literary conclusions, but this was mostly quite interesting in covering differing aspects of this remarkable diary and its author. ( )