Anna Is Still Here

I really loved this book. I think it is a good book for junior high kids. It was very sad until the end and then I was very happy about what happened. I liked the characters in it they were great. It was a great book.

Though there are different characters and plotlines, this book easily could have been the sequel to 'Hide and Seek.' The Markus family have survived by being in hiding and, once the War ended, wanted to stay in their home country of Holland. Thirteen year old Anna spent the War in hiding in the attic room of Daniel De Bree, who gives trumpet lessons, while her parents hid under the ground in a forest. The three of them are deeply affected by what they went through; Anna knows enough to know that Marga, her best friend, died in a concentration-camp, along with many of her relatives and other friends, but doesn't know all of the details she wants to know, and her parents refuse to provide any. They won't even tell her where they were during the War. Her father Simon is the more wound-up of her parents; for a very long time he won't let her display a picture of Marga they still have, since he doesn't want to see pictures of murdered people. He also yells a lot, since they haven't been a family in so long he isn't used to anything but being angry, tense, and suspicious. And both of them are angry and upset over Anna's new friendship with a German woman who lives near them, Frau Neumann, thinking that because of her German name she must be a Nazi. At first Anna thought so too, but soon found out Frau Neumann was also Jewish, and was so drawn to her because she looked exactly like her little daughter Fannie, right down to the birthmark on her forehead. Because her parents are unable and unwilling to talk, Anna goes to Frau Neumann to talk about the War, being in hiding, missing people who are no longer there, the things they have to put up with from people who cannot fathom what they had to go through since they weren't there. She has a very quiet voice from being in hiding, since she barely spoke at all when Mr. De Bree was hiding her, and has been put into the fifth grade despite her age, due to the years of school she missed while in hiding. She can't even answer most of the questions the other students ask her, and she doesn't like to talk about it even if she does know. And even though Holland was one of the relatively friendly and safe places during WWII (there were more people willing to hide Jews and to be in the underground and Resistance than in a place like Poland or Hungary), there are still painful echoes of anti-Semitism to be dealt with. Some people might find the ending unrealistic and contrived, but it's not like that sort of thing never happened in real life. There are enough sad real-life stories where no happy reunions between separated family members took place; why not have a happy ending when you're working with fictional characters, the kind of happy ending that too often didn't happen in real life?

I thought that "Anna Is Still Here" by Ida Vos was a moving novel that told a story of a Jewish family torn apart during the war and their struggle after the completion of the war. Ida Vos gave such realistic personality traits to each character that I found myself feeling a strange closeness to each. It seemed the more I read the more I felt each characters' emotions. I highly recommend this novel to anyone that enjoys piercingly realistic stories and also to those that like to read books that touch your heart and your soul and leave you a changed person.

This book mainly tells us about the effects of the hiding to the survivors--Anna,her family and Mrs. Neuman--that were shown in their lives after hiding.This is the most attracting point of this book because it is what you cannot know from many other 'hiding' books. So don't expect it is a book like ANNE FRANK,THE DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL. Although I like this book pretty much, I enjoy THE UPSTAIRS ROOM by Johanna Reiss more. Please do not hasitate to buy these two books to see if you agree with me or not.

Anna Is Still here is the best book I have ever read. I was so hopeful that Mrs. Nueman would find Fannie and I was so happy when she did. I think that everybody should read this book.