Children's Fiction, Family

Anne Frank and Me

Name: Anne Frank and Me
Author: Cherie Bennett
ISBN: 9780698119734

by Cherie Bennett, Jeff Gottesfeld

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Overview

In one moment Nicole Burns's life changes forever. The sound of gunfire at an Anne Frank exhibit, the panic, the crowd, and Nicole is no longer Nicole. Whiplashed through time and space, she wakes to find herself a privileged Jewish girl living in Nazi-occupied Paris during World War II. No more Internet diaries and boy troubles for Nicole-now she's a carefree Jewish girl, with wonderful friends and a charming boyfriend. But when the Nazi death grip tightens over France, Nicole is forced into hiding, and begins a struggle for survival that brings her face to face with Anne Frank.

"This is a powerful and affecting story." (KLIATT)

After suffering a concussion while on a class trip to a Holocaust exhibit, Nicole finds herself living the life of a Jewish teenager in Paris during the Nazi occupation.

Synopsis

"This is a powerful and affecting story." (KLIATT)

Publishers Weekly

Adapted from husband and wife Bennett and Gottesfeld's (previously teamed for University Hospital) stage drama of the same name, this time-travel view of the Holocaust is long on gimmickry and short on history. Nicole Burns is a self-absorbed teenager only too quick to believe what she reads on the Internet about Anne Frank's Diary being a forgery. When her class visits an exhibit about Anne Frank, the students are assigned the identities of Jewish teenagers during the Holocaust, to make the experience more vivid. Shots ring out and "a sudden pain pierced Nicole, red-hot"; Nicole regains consciousness to find herself in wartime France, living out the destiny of the teen whose name she was given at the museum. Bennett and Gottesfeld acknowledge their debt to Jane Yolen's The Devil's Arithmetic (Nicole's class is supposed to watch the TV adaptation of the work, which also involves an unappreciative teen's journey back through time into the Holocaust), but this treatment doesn't measure up. The time-travel mechanism is inconsistent and incompletely developed, and the writing is flimsy. Ironically, given the attention it pays to the authenticity of Anne Frank's diary, this story includes a pivotal encounter with Anne Frank that blithely contradicts what is known of Frank's life following her family's arrest; here, on a train to Auschwitz, she is cheerful and stalwart in her faith in God. For the increasing number of young readers familiar with this period of Frank's life, this authorial liberty may cast doubt on the accuracy of other parts of the story. Ages 12-up. (Mar.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Boy-crazy and blasé' about school, tenth grader Nicole Burns doesn't finish her assigned reading of The Diary of Anne Frank, and only half listens to her English class' guest speaker, a Holocaust survivor. Then, on a tour of a Holocaust exhibit, Nicole falls and suffers a concussion, which sends her back in time so she becomes Nicole Bernhardt, a Jewish girl living in Paris in 1942. With familiar-looking people from her 21st Century life taking on the roles of family and friends, a confused Nicole suffers the atrocities of the Holocaust with anti-Semitic laws, arrests, physical abuse, concentration camps, and the gas chamber — plus a personal encounter with Anne Frank herself. Was this real-life experience only a dream? Although some serious readers of the Holocaust may find this story too contrived and trifling, other young adults may be hooked by the present and past connection between the lives of today's students and those teenagers who had lived and died during this tragic event. Genre: Holocaust. 2001, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 291 pp., $18.99. Ages 12 up. Reviewer: Kay Park Haas; Ottawa, Kansas

KLIATT

Nicole Burns is a typical suburban American 10th-grader, irritated by school and by her little sister. Her main concern is that she is in love with a boy who seems to be unaware of her. Then, on a school field trip to an exhibit about Anne Frank, Nicole falls and hits her head. When she regains consciousness, she finds that she is a Jewish teenager named Nicole Bernhardt living in Paris during the Nazi occupation. In The Wizard of Oz fashion, people from Nicole's American life appear in different guises in her Paris incarnation. At first she thinks she must be in a dream, but as time goes on she grows to accept her new identity, as all the while life becomes more and more difficult and dangerous for the Jews of Paris. Nicole experiences the horror of the roundup of foreign Jews at the Vélodrome d'Hiver, and learns that her father is a member of the Resistance, despite the danger involved. Her friends help the family survive as food becomes scarce, and finally they go into hiding, like Anne Frank. Betrayed by her boyfriend, Nicole and her little sister are taken away in a cattle car—and meet Anne Frank on the train. On arrival at Birkenau, the little sister is sent to the ovens, and in a heartbreaking scene, Nicole chooses to go with her—and then comes back into her old life as Nicole Burns at the Anne Frank exhibit, shaken and changed by her strange trip into the past. Based on the authors' off-Broadway play of the same title, this is a powerful and affecting story. Narrated by Nicole, it makes the deprivations and degradation of the Nazi occupation come alive. Even if Nicole's trip back in time stretches belief, her emotions are always credible, from her changingfeelings toward her family to her romance with her Paris boyfriend (the boy who ignored her in America), her boredom and terror while in hiding, and her bravery as she and her sister are being transported toward a concentration camp. This gripping story is an excellent companion to The Diary of Anne Frank and to studies of the Holocaust. KLIATT Codes: JS*—Exceptional book, recommended for junior and senior high school students. 2001, Penguin Putnam, 292p, 00-055251, $18.99. Ages 13 to 18. Reviewer: Paula Rohrlick; May 2001 (Vol. 35 No. 3)

VOYA

Nicole Burns, like Anne Frank, is an affluent teenager who would rather flirt than study. She avoids her parents—a father who intellectualizes his feelings and a mother who cannot make it through dinner without closing a real estate deal—and she considers Little Bit, her sister, a pest. Nicole is too busy obsessing about her ideal boyfriend, Jack, on her Web site, Notes from Girl X, to read Anne Frank's diary or watch a television production of Jane Yolen's The Devil's Arithmetic, both English assignments. Using the Internet to bone up on Anne Frank, Nicole stumbles upon some "scholarly looking articles" that minimize the severity of the Holocaust, a viewpoint that is reinforced by her father. When Paulette Litzger-Gold, a Holocaust survivor, speaks to the English class, however, Nicole realizes a mysterious connection. While on a Holocaust field trip, a firecracker explosion attributed to the class outcast, Doom, knocks out Nicole and transports her to a different time. She becomes Nicole Bernhardt, a Jew in 1942 Paris. Her principal and her English teacher become her parents in this allegorical world, offering family tradition and guidance not found in her real family. She must help her family survive the camps and trust her friends to help. As Nicole Bernhardt is dying in the gas chamber, Nicole Burns is being revived. Based on Bennett and Gottesman's 1997 play of the same name, this novel modernizes Nicole's story with the addition of the Internet, and the characters of Mrs. Litzger-Gold and Doom help to emphasize the importance of witnessing, remembering, and seeking truth. Shallow and apathetic, Nicole Burns reaches across time in this complex coming-of-age, time-travelnovel that manages the many allusion-based plot threads well. As Nicole Bernhardt shares a cattle car with Anne Frank, she identifies with the girl and the story that Nicole Burns dismissed. Nicole Burns returns to her world with a better understanding of how honoring the truth about the past will help to safeguard the future. Young adults who have read Anne Frank's diary and Yolen's time-travel story might find wonderful comparisons and contrasts here and might be motivated to read more about the Holocaust. VOYA CODES: 4Q 4P J S (Better than most, marred only by occasional lapses; Broad general YA appeal; Junior High, defined as grades 7 to 9; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12). 2001, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 352p, . Ages 13 to 18. Reviewer: Lucy Schall SOURCE: VOYA, April 2001 (Vol. 24, No.1)

School Library Journal

Gr 7-9-Nicole Burns believes the Holocaust is ancient history, and wonders why she has to study it in school. Turning to the Internet for some information on the period, she encounters a site run by Holocaust deniers. The next day, on a field trip to an Anne Frank exhibit with her class, the sound of gunfire transports her back in time to Occupied Paris where she finds herself the eldest daughter in a Jewish family, even though she herself is not Jewish. Although unwilling to let go of memories of her life as a modern American teenager, Nicole eventually finds them beginning to fade as survival becomes more difficult. En route to a concentration camp, the teen meets Anne Frank in a cattle car. When Nicole eventually awakens from her Holocaust nightmare, she understands the truth and becomes a changed person. The authors have adapted their 1998 play of the same title into this novel, but it never attains the intensity or the pathos of The Diary of Anne Frank or Jane Yolen's The Devil's Arithmetic (Viking, 1988). However, it will appeal to teens interested in Holocaust stories.-Sharon Grover, Arlington County Department of Libraries, VA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.