Title: Annexed
Author: Sharon Dogar
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children
Publication Date: October 4, 2010
Hardcover: 352 pages
ISBN: 978-0547501956
Genre: YA, Historical Fiction
I look out the window into the street . . . I’m meant to be at Mr. Frank’s workplace in a few hours. We’re arriving separately, all of us. We’ll walk into the building just like it was any other visit — only this time we’ll never walk out again.
What was it like hiding in the Annex with Anne Frank? To be with Anne every day while she wrote so passionately in her diary? To be in a secret world within a world at war — alive on the inside, everything dying on the outside?
Peter Van Pels and his family have lost their country, their home, and their freedom, and now they are fighting desperately to remain alive.
Look through Peter’s eyes.
He has a story to tell, too.
Are you listening?
My Review:
Annexed by Sharon Dogar is an interesting historical look, or rather a fictionalized look through the eyes of Peter van Pels, at what life was like in the Annex with Anne Frank. This book is marketed for young adults and is brilliantly done, but I would like to state straightaway that I think it would help the young adult reader to have read The Diary of Anne Frank first and then to read this historical fictional view of the same time period from the perspective of Peter van Pels. Dogar has done quite a bit of research into the time period and uses her creative license to begin with Peter being ill in Mauthausen, a concentration camp, in 1945 and rather than having him pass away, she has him recalling the years before his internment in Mauthausen which includes the Nazi occupation and his time in the Annex with Anne Frank. Annexed is brilliantly written and the adjusting time periods of Peter’s memory is well noted so students can easily follow along. Dogar takes the reader from Holland to Mauthausen in a deeply moving and emotionally charged book. While it is fictionalized, Annexed gives the reader a look at the atrocity of WWII and what life was like for the Jews during 1942-1945. I found this book to be a compelling read and as a history buff and an adult I still found Annexed to be quite interesting and I highly recommend Annexed by Sharon Dogar for teens interested in learning more about WWII or as a companion to The Diary of Anne Frank.
Sharon Dogar, author of Annexed, is a children’s psychotherapist who lives in Oxford, England, with her family. She discovered Anne Frank’s diary as a child and then again recently when her daughter started reading it. While writing and researching this book, she spent many hours soaking up the atmosphere of the Annex. This is her third novel for young adults.
I received a complimentary copy of Annexed by Sharon Dogar from FSB Associates. Receiving a review copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned novel.
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