More nazi exploitation for kids
"Diary of Anne Frank "
Anne Frank graphic novel launched
Comic book of most widely read document to emerge from the Holocaust is aimed at teenagers who might not pick up her diary
Graphic novel version of The Diary of Anne Frank Graphic novel version of The Diary of Anne Frank, by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón. Photograph: Evert Elzinga/AP
The Anne Frank House Museum in Amsterdam has launched a graphic novel version of the teenage Jewish diarist's biography, hoping to bring her story and death in a Nazi concentration camp to a wider audience.
Spokeswoman Annemarie Bekker said the publication was aimed at teenagers who might not otherwise pick up Anne Frank's diary, the most widely read document to emerge from the Holocaust.
"Not everyone will read the diary," she said. "The one doesn't exclude the other."
Using the style of comic books to illustrate serious historical topics, even genocide, is not new. Maus, Art Spiegelman's graphic biography of his father, a survivor of the Auschwitz death camp, won a special Pulitzer prize in 1992.
The Anne Frank biography, authorised by the museum, is a collaboration between American author Sid Jacobson and artist Ernie Colón, the creative team behind the bestselling graphic novel of the 9/11 Commission report.
Publisher Hill & Wang will launch the illustrated book in the US later this month; Macmillan is publishing it in Britain in the autumn. Translations in German, French and Italian are planned.
Bekker said the biography would be included with classroom teaching materials about the second world war. The museum decided to commission the work after the success of a similar educational project, The Search, about a fictional family in hiding.
Anne Frank wrote the diary from her 13th birthday, shortly before her family went into hiding from the Nazis, and during the two years she and her family remained in a concealed apartment in Amsterdam. It was published after the war by her father Otto Frank, the only survivor. Anne Frank died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945.
