Despite the pletho­ra of Anne Frank books avail­able, I would not hes­i­tate to rec­om­mend this one. With its con­ver­sa­tion­al tone, it brings Anne to life with­out sac­ri­fic­ing the salient facts of the Holo­caust or stoop­ing to inap­pro­pri­ate famil­iar­i­ty with the char­ac­ters. Her­mann includes the rel­e­vant facts of Holo­caust his­to­ry in an unob­tru­sive man­ner and also inter­weaves infor­ma­tion, a map, pho­tographs, anec­dotes, and per­son­al char­ac­ter­is­tics gleaned from books writ­ten about Anne Frank and inter­views from oral sources, includ­ing many remarks by Anne’s close friends, neigh­bors, teach­ers, and of course, Miep Gies, into this bio­graph­i­cal his­to­ry. Excerpts from the diary fig­ure through­out the nar­ra­tive, enabling the read­er to feel the extra­or­di­nary sense of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pre-teens and teens seem to have for Anne, but the nar­ra­tive cov­ers a wider peri­od, up to the present, in fact. In addi­tion to a time­line, there are chap­ter notes (in which all sources used are not­ed by chap­ter), a glos­sary, fur­ther read­ing, Inter­net address­es, and an index. For ages: 11 – 15.