My title is the salutation with which Anne Frank began each entry of her now-famous diary. Like many other girls of my generation, I read the diary when I was in elementary school (along with Corrie ten Boom’s The Hiding Place). I remember these as early books that awoke me to idea of evil in the world on a large scale, but I also remember liking the coziness of the hiding places that Frank and Ten Boom describe and the odd intimacy of Anne’s imaginary addressee, “Kitty.” In the midst of horrific violence and prejudice, these stories show that people are capable of creating places of calm.
I’ve revisited Anne Frank’s diary recently, while reading it aloud to the boys at night for the past couple of weeks, in preparation for our visit to the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam on our way home from Tanzania in July. I wasn’t sure how the book would go over. It is, after all, about a girl, and even though my memories of it were vague, I thought I remembered it including quite a bit of talk about her first romance and her experience of puberty and teenage angst. So I was skeptical, but I wanted the boys to have some context for our visit to the historic site.
This bedtime reading—like all of them this year—has been successful beyond my wildest dreams. In a year that’s been full of new and foreign experiences, our long-established bedtime routine has been a welcome constant. And to our delight, the boys have been up to reading Anne Frank—and Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn and other classic texts that we’ve turned to after reading (and rereading independently) Harry Potter and all of the other children’s fiction we brought with us to Zanzibar.
What’s more, we’ve had some terrific discussions of these books: How could Anne survive without ever getting to play outside? Why did anyone listen to Hitler or carry out his plans? Why do teenagers act so weird? How could people with religious faith be so mean to other people?
As an English professor and literacy scholar, I’m not unfamiliar with the power of the written word, but reading with Oscar and Calvin this year has given me a new window on how powerful books can be. Our world here is pretty small: Our apartment is tiny (around 800 square feet), and the entire island of Zanzibar is only about 50 miles long and 20 miles wide. Many people here don’t ever go more than a few miles from where they are born. But we’ve been able to expand our horizons considerably beyond the here and now, thanks to the boys’ school library and the packing habits of tourists (most of the books that are available are used, and they include quite a few classic novels: I imagine the optimistic tourist packing, say, Bleak House with the hope that it will finally get read on vacation).
Our experience of reading in Zanzibar has been very different than most people’s. Books are expensive and hard to come by, but, based on the interviews I’ve been doing with adults here, I think there is a hunger to know more about life outside this island. Many adults report reading their children’s schoolbooks—not to help with homework, but simply for pleasure reading. The vast majority of literate people I interviewed read newspapers, explaining that they want to learn more about the world and to educate themselves.
As I have been so many times this year, I’m grateful for the books that I do have, and for the freedom to travel and learn more about what I’ve read about.
Dear Kitty, I can’t wait to see where you lived in Amsterdam, and thank you for sharing Anne’s secrets with my family.
Julie--I visited the Anne Frank House about 15 years ago and, like many others, I was humbled by how the Franks and their companions maintained their humanity in such a tiny space, always fearful of discovery. I don't remember exactly how old Calvin and Oscar are, but I know I read the diary when I was 9 or 10 and, in tandem, my mother and aunt told me about the Holocaust. I dread the day I have to talk to my boys about it and admire your courage in sharing these subjects with your boys in a sensitive way. Please let me know how the visit goes.
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