Betraying Anne Frank

September 20, 2023 1 min read

Abigail Anthony
National Review

Excerpt: A Texas public school fired an eighth-grade English teacher who assigned the reading Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation, a graphic version of Anne’s unforgettable diary. The adaptation is particularly contentious because it depicts passages in which Anne describes her genitalia, expresses curiosity about the female body, and talks about menstruation.

Perhaps most egregiously, it’s a simplification that dishonors the care that Anne devoted to her writing. The issue is not whether teenagers are prompted to engage with her explicit passages; it’s whether they’re prompted to engage with her writing at all.

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