When We Flew Away by Alice Hoffman ~ a Review

by MK French

Anne Frank and her family lived in the Netherlands before the Nazis began accumulating power and restricting more and more freedoms of the people. This is the story of her life before they went into hiding, which was detailed in her now famous diary, published posthumously by her bereaved father.

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September 2024; Scholastic Press; 978-1338856941
audio, ebook, print (304 pages); children's historical fiction

I was drawn to this book mostly because of Alice Hoffman's skill in writing deeply emotional novels. This book outlines the Frank family's life in the Netherlands after they left Germany ahead of Kristallnacht. They were lucky, as most countries in that period had quotas for Jewish refugees, or closed their borders entirely. We see Anne with friends, with her sister, with her parents and grandmother. As years pass, there are bombs, Germans invading, school closures, and fewer things that Jews were allowed to do. It grew harder for Anne's parents to hide it from her or her older sister Margot.

If you've ever read Miep's story in addition to Anne Frank's diary, then you'll recognize parts of this book. Those that the Franks were friends with had tried their best to get them out of the country, then to hide them. It's heartbreaking to see how the Dutch children fell in line with the Nazis and began harassing Jewish children as if they hadn't been friends the year before, how soldiers threatened people, and the tenor of the city changed to one of fear. We know how that story ends, which makes each page closer to the end that much more heartbreaking. Some of the conversations are fictionalized and extrapolated from what we do know, which serves to flesh out all of these people. This is a novel that should help the reader remember the past and ensure it never happens again.

Buy When We Flew Away at Amazon

Born and raised in New York City, M.K. French started writing stories when very young, dreaming of different worlds and places to visit. She always had an interest in folklore, fairy tales, and the macabre, which has definitely influenced her work. She currently lives in the Midwest with her husband, three young children, and a golden retriever.

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