And 52 percent of Americans wrongly think Hitler came to power through force. Ironically, some of the books that have been challenged or banned in the United States are the very ones that could help us piece together what happened during this unimaginable period of human history The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank The Diary of a Young Girl is another first hand account of life in Nazi German told from the perspective of a Jewish girl. The text is, in fact, the diary that Anne Frank kept while she, her family, and others were in hiding in an apartment attic in Amsterdam.
Anne did not survive, but her father, Otto Frank, advocated for her diary to be published. By: Lauren Salerno One of the key consequences of book banning is erasure. Ironically, some of the books that have been challenged or banned in the United States are the very ones that could help us piece together what happened during this unimaginable period of human history June 13, Lauren Salerno Banned and Challenged Books. Students waged a letter writing campaign and a review committee recommended the book returned.
Initial reports stated a version of the book was stopped being assigned for sexual material and homosexual themes. The version, the 50th anniversary edition, would not be taught despite the school not following its own complaint policy. The Internet caught the story and it drew international attention. The book remained part of the curriculum, possibly at another grade level. Despite success in these other markets, the diary did not sell well in the United Kingdom, where it quickly fell out of print.
Eventually, the portions of the book removed by Otto and the publisher, roughly 30 percent of the book, were added back to the diary in the Critical Edition in and Definitive Edition in Earlier this year, even more material became available when researchers were able to restore even more of the diary.
This diary has been translated into the over 70 languages and has sold over 30 million copies. Several other plays and movies have been made since with varying degrees of success. The book has also been transformed into a manga and an anime film in Japan, Anne no Nikki. Several graphic novels have also been made, including, Anne Frank from Gareth Stevens Paperback, an authorized graphic biography edition released by The Anne Frank Foundation which is being turned into an animated film, and an upcoming graphic novel from Penguin Books.
Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania discovered that some American school libraries have banned or censored the book because Anne writes bluntly about her menstruation. In , the book was challenged in Wise County, Virginia because parents complained that the book contains sexually offensive passages and undermined adult authority when Anne criticizes her mother. In , the Baker Middle School in Corpus Christi, Texas removed the book from its library after two parents complained that it was pornographic.
However, the students fought back and waged a letter-writing campaign to keep it, which persuaded the review committee to recommend that book stay on shelves. In , the diary was translated into Arabic and Farsi by the Paris-based Aladdin Project, which aims to spread awareness of the Holocaust and counter racism and intolerance. In response, Hezbollah asked Lebanese officials to prosecute those responsible for the distribution of the book and called for the book to be banner in Lebanese schools because they claimed the diary promoted Zionism.
In response, a Beirut school removed a textbook containing excerpts of The Diary of Anne Frank from its syllabus.
In , the Culpeper County, Virginia school system banned the 50th Anniversary Definitive Edition of Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl after a parent complained of sexual themes, including sexual content and homosexual themes. However, after consideration, it was decided a copy of the newer version would remain in the library and classes would revert to using the older version. In , a mother of a 7th grade student filed a formal complaint in Northville, Michigan because she felt the explicit passages about sexuality were pornographic.
They wrote:. A good education depends on protecting the right to read, inquire, question and think for ourselves. We strongly urge you to keep The Diary of a Young Girl in its full, uncensored form, in classrooms in Northville.
The reconsideration committee voted to keep the book. In , more than copies of the diary and other books on the Holocaust were found vandalized in 31 municipal libraries in Japan. The Israeli embassy donated books about Anne Frank to the Tokyo public library system, to replace the damaged copies.
And although the police made an arrest in the case, they did not indict the person because they found the person to be mentally incompetent. In fact, even though several schools teach about Anne Frank, they do not use the diary at all.
Instead, they use the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich, which is based on the earlier version of the book. Some use the movies and the mini-series. A few use the censored edition. It appears that no one uses the uncensored version as part of their lesson plan. Censored or not, the diary still stands as the embodiment of hope and a monument to the indestructible nature of the human spirit while also representing a tragedy of lost potential and serves as a reminder of the horrors of the Holocaust.
The reader becomes Kitty, a helpless observer to what is occurring. But the censored version only presents half the picture. The Anne that wrote to Kitty in the censored version is a flawless ideal and the embodiment of youthful spirit in the face of tragedy. In contrast, the Anne that wrote to Kitty in the uncensored version is a real teenage girl.
She is insecure as she tries to deal with her emerging sexuality and stumbles through her first romantic relationship. The real Anne fights with her family, throws tantrums, and has issues with her mother.
The uncensored version presents an Anne that is a real and vulnerable girl on the cusp of becoming a woman. It shows her in a truer light, not as a saint, but as a girl like every other girl.
She was nothing, actually; people try to make a saint out of her and glorify her. That she was not. She was an ordinary, normal girl with a talent for writing. There is a statue of Anne Frank in Amsterdam near the Westerkerk. It is not very ornate or even very large. Instead, the statue is the perfect representation of a little girl who went through so much and who brought awareness to the world.
In , the Dutch translator Rosey E. Pool made a first translation of the Diary, which was never published. As well, Judith Jones , while working for the publisher Doubleday , read and recommended the Diary, pulling it out of the rejection pile. That book by that kid? The introduction of the English publication was written by Eleanor Roosevelt. There, was revealed a completely different Anne to the child that I had lost. I had no idea of the depths of her thoughts and feelings.
It was reported around the world that in February , copies of the Frank diary and other material related to the Holocaust were found to be vandalized in 31 public libraries in Tokyo, Japan. Some of the extra passages detail her emerging sexual desires; others include unflattering descriptions of her mother and other people living together.
In , a similar controversy arose in a 7th grade setting in Northville, Michigan , focusing on explicit passages about sexuality. For the full Wikipedia article on the history of this work, please click here.
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