Product Description

In one moment Nicole Burns's life changes forever. The sound of gunfire at an Anne Frank exhibit, the panic, the crowd, and Nicole is no longer Nicole. Whiplashed through time and space, she wakes to find herself a privileged Jewish girl living in Nazi-occupied Paris during World War II. No more Internet diaries and boy troubles for Nicole-now she's a carefree Jewish girl, with wonderful friends and a charming boyfriend. But when the Nazi death grip tightens over France, Nicole is forced into hiding, and begins a struggle for survival that brings her face to face with Anne Frank.

"This is a powerful and affecting story." (KLIATT)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #709568 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780698119734
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Adapted from husband and wife Bennett and Gottesfeld's (previously teamed for University Hospital) stage drama of the same name, this time-travel view of the Holocaust is long on gimmickry and short on history. Nicole Burns is a self-absorbed teenager only too quick to believe what she reads on the Internet about Anne Frank's Diary being a forgery. When her class visits an exhibit about Anne Frank, the students are assigned the identities of Jewish teenagers during the Holocaust, to make the experience more vivid. Shots ring out and "a sudden pain pierced Nicole, red-hot"; Nicole regains consciousness to find herself in wartime France, living out the destiny of the teen whose name she was given at the museum. Bennett and Gottesfeld acknowledge their debt to Jane Yolen's The Devil's Arithmetic (Nicole's class is supposed to watch the TV adaptation of the work, which also involves an unappreciative teen's journey back through time into the Holocaust), but this treatment doesn't measure up. The time-travel mechanism is inconsistent and incompletely developed, and the writing is flimsy. Ironically, given the attention it pays to the authenticity of Anne Frank's diary, this story includes a pivotal encounter with Anne Frank that blithely contradicts what is known of Frank's life following her family's arrest; here, on a train to Auschwitz, she is cheerful and stalwart in her faith in God. For the increasing number of young readers familiar with this period of Frank's life, this authorial liberty may cast doubt on the accuracy of other parts of the story. Ages 12-up.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Gr 7-9-Nicole Burns believes the Holocaust is ancient history, and wonders why she has to study it in school. Turning to the Internet for some information on the period, she encounters a site run by Holocaust deniers. The next day, on a field trip to an Anne Frank exhibit with her class, the sound of gunfire transports her back in time to Occupied Paris where she finds herself the eldest daughter in a Jewish family, even though she herself is not Jewish. Although unwilling to let go of memories of her life as a modern American teenager, Nicole eventually finds them beginning to fade as survival becomes more difficult. En route to a concentration camp, the teen meets Anne Frank in a cattle car. When Nicole eventually awakens from her Holocaust nightmare, she understands the truth and becomes a changed person. The authors have adapted their 1998 play of the same title into this novel, but it never attains the intensity or the pathos of The Diary of Anne Frank or Jane Yolen's The Devil's Arithmetic (Viking, 1988). However, it will appeal to teens interested in Holocaust stories.-Sharon Grover, Arlington County Department of Libraries, VA

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Gr. 6-8. As Nicole Burns' tenth-grade class is touring the Anne Frank in the World exhibit, shots ring out and she is injured, catapulting her into World War II France. In this time warp, she is Nicole Bernhardt, the daughter of a prominent Jewish doctor and his wife who bear a remarkable resemblance to her history teacher and high-school principal. Her world becomes one in which she must endure the early indignities of being Jewish, enforced hiding as the Germans tighten their hold on France, and the eventual horrors of a Nazi concentration camp. Similar but less tightly constructed than Jane Yolen's The Devil's Arithmetic (1988), this novel is strongest as Nicole gradually forgets her twenty-first-century existence and becomes totally a Jewish teen of the 1940s. As a book, this adaptation of a well-reviewed off-Broadway play, is a didactic counterpart to The Diary of Anne Frank and Yolen's novel. Frances Bradburn
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

A Must-Read Holocaust Novel For All Ages
The authors of ANNE FRANK AND ME have accomplished a phenomenal task. They have written a Holocaust novel that is deeply moving without being a depressing read. Like THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK itself, the ultimate message of Bennett & Gottesfeld's book is one of hope. Both books demonstrate that even in the midst of the most horrendous violations of human rights, good people still exist who can make a difference. Without trivializing the historical tragedy, both books paint three-dimensional portraits of real teenagers, just as concerned with fashion and dating as they are with whether they will live or die. This juxtaposition is refreshingly realistic. Nicole Burns is an average teenager, at times intolerant, boy-crazy, and uninterested in schoolwork. She, like most of the characters in this book, is not 100% good nor 100% evil. In a misguided effort to be politically correct, some authors of historical fiction make their characters sinners or saints, leaving the reader with the impression that she could never relate to these larger-than-life people. But teens will identify with Nicole. They will realize that the Holocaust happened to ordinary people like themselves, and that it could happen again. This story will hook even reluctant readers with its humor and up-to-date setting, including Nicole's own website. Nicole's time-travel to Paris in 1942 is believably handled. Events become gradually more intense, so that by the time Nicole is in real danger, readers who would not normally choose a "serious," "educational" book will keep reading to find out what happens next. You will cry. You will also smile. You will definitely think and learn. What more could you ask from a book?

The Faces of the Holocaust, Including Yours and Mine
The more you know about the Nazi occupation of Paris, France, and the checkered French response to it, the more you will understand what a remarkable feat authors Bennett and Gottesfeld have accomplished in a book ostensibly for young adults. This book, full of the adolescent longing, romance, and expression of young sexuality that marks Anne Frank's own diary, is a veritable Sophie's Choice for teens. If only all historical fiction for young people could be this powerful. There are three main reasons for Anne Frank and Me's power. First, every teen (and this adult reader) will come to fall in love with the authors' heroine, a modern Christian tenth grader named Nicole, who describes herself accurately on her Girl X website as a "girl in the middle." She reminded me too much of too many of my own students, too distracted by the drama of their lives to do their homework. But under Nicole, and under my students, is a young woman who could change the world if only she'd let herself seize the day. Second, the authors' research is brilliant. Nazi-Occupied Paris comes to life as a teen would see it. Readers will understand all the major events, including the anti-Jewish laws, the yellow star decree, the July 1942 round-up of foreign-born Jews, the black market, the continuation of Paris' cultural life, the collaborationist press, the French fascist miltias, the killing of innocents in reprisal for acts of resistance.... It's all there. Both present and past are expertly rendered from a teen's eye view. The dialogue is crisp and idiomatic in the present, truthful in the past. The authors embrace Nicole, including the same romantic and erotic longings in her life that Anne Frank wrote about in her own diary. Nicole is in love with a boy who loves her. This love is reflected in her diary, as you might expect. Under the circumstances, knowing what we know about what is likely to come, it is both breathtaking and heartbreaking. Heartbreaking too is Nicole's chance meeting with Anne on a cattle car on the way to Birkenau. Parts of this book made me, a Christian teacher, shudder. I like to think that were I alive back then, I would have been another Miep Gies, doing everything I could to keep Nicole's--or Anne Frank's--family alive. I like to think I would have brought food to the Secret Annex. But who can deny that most of our Christian brethren were too worried about their own lives and too influenced by centuries of anti-Semitism to do what we could to protect our Jewish neighborhors? It made me uncomfortable to be confronted with this reality as I read. But so be it. The point of reading is not to be made comfortable. Lastly, this book is a great read, full of plot twists and turns that defied my best efforts to guess what was coming next. I read it in a single sitting, something I haven't done with a young adult novel since Speak. Whether you're a teen or a parent or a teacher or a grandparent, put Anne Frank and Me on your reading list, somewhere near the top. You will glad you did.

Anne Frank and Me
Anne Frank and Me is one of the best books I have ever read. I couldn't put it down. It captured my attention from the beginning because I connected with the main character Nicole. She thought that nothing could go right for her. Come to find out when she entered the life of a Jewish girl nothing was going right there either. This book had so many twists that I had to finsih it while sitting at the dining room table with my whole family watching me...that is how good it was.