Ari Folman

This is an odd book -- starting with the lack of the question mark in the title. It's a fantasy story inspired by Anne Frank's diary and is about Anne Frank's diary. Literally. The protagonist of this book is Kitty, the imaginary friend to whom Anne addressed her diary entries. A lightning bolt strikes the diary on display at the modern day Anne Frank museum in Amsterdam, and Kitty springs to life. She's invisible in the museum and can only exist outside the museum if she is close to Anne's diary . . . so she steals it and runs off to have adventures with some Robin Hood-style street urchins who help out war refugees trying to find haven in the Netherlands.

As Kitty evades law enforcement on her convertible ice skates (!!!) and by swinging about on ropes, she remembers what happens to Anne by re-reading the diary, leading up to the Anne's eventual fate of which Kitty is ignorant.

It would be rather moving if it weren't also so silly and campy.

It's all the more disappointing since I so loved the author's Anne Frank's Diary: The Graphic Adaptation.

This graphic novel was originally released in French in 2021 in conjunction with an animated film of the same name that same year, and I am assuming it is an adaptation of the film instead of the other way around, but it is not made clear anywhere on the book itself or on the movie's website. I'm thinking the story might go down better as a movie, but I'm not going to rush out to track it down anytime soon.… (mer)

Ari Folman was sent 1982 as a young soldier to Libanon. What did he do when the Israeli army had surrounded the Sabra and Shatila camps in West Beirut, looking on while the massacre took place? He has no recollection of his actions.
In this brilliant film using the form of cartoon images Folman documents his quest to escape his amnesia — unlike the majority of Israelis when they later elected as prime minister Ariel Sharon who had been held personally responsible for the massacre. But then Sharon was not the first nor the last: He had illustrious predecessors like Menachem Begin (https://archive.org/details/AlbertEinsteinLetterToTheNewYorkTimes.December41948/page/n1/mode/2up) and an equally illustrious successor in Netanyahu (https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/genocide-in-gaza?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2) (X-23/I-24) 5*… (mer)

Ari Folman and David Polonsky’s adaptation of Anne Frank’s Diary faithfully translates some of her text with illustrations depicting the scenes she described in her original writing or events that are documented in other historical records. They also drawc omparisons with other fights against facism, referencing the Danuta Danielsson’s 1985 hitting of a neo-Nazi with her handbag and setting it amid the growing resistance to the Nazis in 1940s Holland (pg. 119). When Anne describes the result of the family’s charade to hide their location from the Nazis as the enter the Annex, she mentions some of the rumors. Folman and Polonsky reference the events of The Sound of Music to visualize rumor one in which the family made it to the Swiss border (pg. 25).

One of their innovations was to use more imaginary imagery to evoke the mood of Anne Frank’s more depressive moments while also portraying her imaginary musings as she described them in her writing. Further, as the diary progresses and Anne became more confident in her writing, they begin to feature splash-pages that include large sections of text presented in their entirety in order to honor the power of Anne’s words, such as in her 15 July 1944 entry: “It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering, and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too. I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too will end, that peace and tranquility will return once more. In the meantime, I must hold on to my ideals” (pg. 141). Anne’s text and advice continue to resonate with readers of all ages due to the powerful honesty she displayed. Readers find connections with her text when they’re young and return later in life to connect to different parts.

The work was made with the approval of the Anne Frank Fonds Basel, which Anne’s father Otto Frank founded in 1963 to oversee the publication of her diary and to ensure faithful translations that shared Anne Frank’s life with people around the world. Folman wrote the TV series Be Tipul (In Therapy) and directed the film, Waltz with Bashir. Illustrator Polonsky was the lead artist for Waltz with Bashir. Fascists in Texas and Florida including Greg Abbott, Ron DeSantis, and the extremist group Moms for Liberty have worked to try and ban this adaptation and other editions of The Diary of a Young Girl, knowing that this adaptation makes Anne Frank’s text more accessible to readers who would learn from her courage and humanity and recognize the warning signs of fascism in their states. As Cornelia Funke wrote, “When people start burning books they’ll soon burn human beings.”

Folman and Polonsky’s graphic novel adaptation does not take the place of Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl, but it neatly compliments the original and can serve as an introduction to the material for students who aren’t used to reading diaries.… (mer)

I've read versions of her diary several times, both for school and for my own self. I hesitated to read this one because I didn't know how a graphic novel would treat the content. It treated it well and I relaxed a little. I chose to read a graphic novel, a format I usually dislike. I chose to read this as an -ebook- no less, and that is a -stressful- reading experience for me every time I do it. So that is why this is a three star rating. I can't really think of anything insightful to say or that I haven't said in other reviews of other versions of her diary I've read. There's a wonderful mini-series adaptation on Youtube for free starring Hannah Taylor Gordon.… (mer)