Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex Including Her Unfinished Novel Cady's Life

3.5 stars! This is part of Jamison's Marvel-a-thon challenge. The challenge: Captain America- read a book set in or written in WW2. Whenever I think about Anne Frank or even World War two in general, I can't help but feel so sad. A life, among countless more, taken needlessly. Anne was talented and precocious. Had she lived, I think she could have done amazing things with her life. This review will be a bit different because this book is a bit different. I wrote 5 (five) notes in my tiny notebook that I use to keep notes in the book I'm reading. I'm just going to put what those notes say and maybe touch on them briefly. ∇ This is a mix of diary entries, stories and essays. The diary entries weren't included in the original book or at least not in my copy. They gave more of of an insight to life in the secret Annex along with mentions of life before hiding. ∇ I mentioned before how it makes me sad to think of Anne Frank. Had she had the time, she could have grown to be a truly great writer. She was on her way to doing something great. ∇ Her stories are very childlike but that is to be expected as she was a child herself when writing them. But that is something to that is in this book. ∇ I learned more about Anne from reading this than I did reading her diary. Anne poured her soul into those stories and essays. ∇ I firmly believe that Anne was very progressive for her time. I also believe she was a feminist. Reading her essay "The Den of Iniquity" confirms this for me.

Me after reading the book : "I cannot believe that a young girl wrote this book." My fiance bought me this book (together with The Diary of a Young Girl) when we visited the Bergen Belsen Memorial. They have a small bookshop where you can find books about the history of Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp, Holocaust, and some diaries/journals of WWII survivors. Tis is a beautiful collection of Anne Frank's journal entries, short stories (both fiction and non-fiction), as well as her unfinished novel. I became her fan after reading The Diary of a Young Girl and I can say that she's a natural born story-teller and writer. This collection shows not only her skills on writing (at a very young age) but also her thoughts about life. Her stories are inspiring, and full of wisdom and love. Some of my favorite stories from this book are ; Eva's Dream, Happiness, Give, Blurry the Explorer, Why? and Cady's Life. If you've read and loved her diary, then this is a must-read for you. If not, I would still recommend this for you.

This book is such a fantastic read! Anne has such a way of words, especially in her fantasy stories. It's difficult to not re-read right away!