I ordered “Anne Frank” after reading that the author/illustrator team Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon were the same duo who had produced “The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation”, which I felt was very well done.

I read the original Anne Frank Diary many years ago and have kept up with the various controversies over its publishing; mainly the “white-washing” the publishers had done – supposedly with the consent of Otto Frank – of its contents. Did Otto rewrite Anne’s diary to take out the personal parts? Did the publishers attempt to “universalise” Anne’s diary in hopes of making it less “Jewish” and more “commercial” to the wider world? Did Hackett and Goodrich do the same with their Broadway play and subsequent movie? We’re talking about the 1950′s; the book’s message and contents were judged much differently than they are today.

Jacobson and Colon have “updated” the Anne Frank diary and biography to today’s sensibilities. Along with parts of the diary, they have written and drawn the life of the Otto Frank family, from its origins in Frankfurt, to their lives in Amsterdam, and, finally, to their fate in the German concentration camps. Only Otto emerged alive. The authors also record the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party and their subsequent take over of the German government in the early 1930′s. Jacobson and Colon do not neglect, either, the friends and family and helpers who were the supporting players in the Frank family story. Their book makes harrowing reading, particularly the part about life in Auchwitz and Bergen-Belson. This book could not have been written much earlier than it was. Today’s reader is ready for the truth about Anne Frank and her fate and the truth of the world around her.