Three picture books and a Sanderson

Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson (2023): DNF. Not unenjoyable but also not gripping. His prose here was more engaging than the last Sanderson I tried to read, which actually isn't saying much. Also it was short enough that it didn't physically hurt to try to read it, which is another point in its favor. It had a strange tone, not quite funny, not quite satirical. Despite having nothing in common with Princess Bride The Book, it strangely felt like it was trying to be Princess Bride The Book.

Then after DNFing, I flipped to the end to see that, yes, it was trying to riff on the tone of Princess Bride The Book, so I guess it did it well enough that I could be like "...is this trying to be Princess Bride without understanding what makes Princess Bride funny/satirical?" But hey, the intention came through.

The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming: A Christmas Story by Lemony Snicket (2007): Excellent, hilarious book about a latke that jumps out of the pan while being fried and deals with the fact that that family are the only Jews in the picturesque village full of people celebrating Christmas. Then the latke is eaten. A++, no notes.

I Am Anne Frank by Brad Meltzer (2020): internets, I read this book for content for a 4 year old. I don't even believe in doing that, but here I am. The 4 year old is a big fan of this series, and Somehow, both me and his parents, when getting books from this series out of the library for him, and seeing all the books that there are in the catalog, have not gotten him this one. Then one day he went to the library and picked it out himself. And a lot of the time, he treats getting out books as the joy is just getting them out, not reading them, so I was going to just return this one unread on the logic that he wouldn't remember, and let this problem be his parents problem, but okay, fine, let's read this book and see how bad this would be to read this to him.

I went in fully expecting this to be a Saint Anne book and I was 100% correct. But it's worse than that. Now, this book series, it focuses a lot on the famous person as a kid (because of the target audience), then goes into them doing what makes them famous, and stops before death, and ends with a lovely heartwarming moral lesson for the target audience. This is a problem with Anne Frank, who never did anything notable in her life, because she never had the opportunity, because she was Jewish. There is no "and then I grew up and did the thing that made me famous". There is no "and then I did anything". She has no accomplishments. This already doesn't fit in at all with the other books in the series: those books are about triumphing over adversity, about working hard and accomplishing great things. Anne Frank did not do any of that.

So what can Anne Frank do? Well, you see, she dies and thus teaches you a moral lesson. That's how these books end: they have the person do what makes them famous and then it has a moral lesson for the target audience. The moral lesson of a dead Jewish girl is, *checks notes*, help other people and be kind. The last line of the book is "I am Anne Frank and I believe that people are truly good at heart." Okay. Well, I suspect if you go back in time and ask her in the concentration camp, you may get a different answer. But no one wants to hear that. They want to know that a tragic victim forgave them for it even as she died. No hard feelings!

I've made a metric I call "do they expect any X to read this book/attend this training/watch this video about X". Applicable to many things! Does this book about disability expect anyone with this disability to read it? Does this presentation about mental health problems expect anyone in the audience to have any mental health problems? Does this book about a Jew expect any Jews to read it?

This book is a bit meh on that. (I know the author is Jewish. That's irrelevant to the intended audience.)

But, hey, I had no great expectations anyway.

Anne Frank by Clémentine V. Baron, translated by Catherine Nolan (2018): Gotten out by an older kid at the same time, so the reading for content was less severe, although months ago this kid DNFed the I Survived the Nazi Invasion book really early on because it was too sad (which we were glad of; when she picked it up, we were all like, uh, let us know if you want to talk about it, and then she read for a bit and asked if something really happened, we said yes, and she put the book down), and has complained of nightmares from certain things, so, like, there was some checking the content, but I skimmed it more. On the whole, better than the above book. I think it did a much better job of not flinching at the end. I'd rather read this book to the 4 year old.

Thank you for these.

Thank you for these write-ups - the enforced ~moral on the Anne Frank book sounds especially infuriating. :/

Any time people try to make a moral lesson out of Anne Frank that isn't "murdering Jews is bad", they miss the entire point. And then this book takes it further and bends backwards into "Anne Frank helped people! You should help people too!" Sigh. The thing about Anne Frank is that her story is a tragedy; trying to remix that into an inspirational book for children is, well, obviously what was going to happen by putting this person into this book series, and so is why we weren't getting it from the library in the first place. Because if the kid insists on this book, I really am going to have to sit him down and preface it with a long explanation; he knows about the Holocaust, but he's never had to deal with Saint Anne Frank Who Loved Everyone And Forgave Them For The Holocaust While It Was In Progress, and honestly he shouldn't have to deal with that.

I haven't thought about Anne Frank in a while, but as someone with a goyish upbringing (though the dad's side of my family is Jewish) who read Anne Frank's diary (the uncensored version) when I was 12, I thought the inspirational message of her story was "keep a diary and write honestly about your life because people might care enough to read it after your death", not "believe that people are truly good at heart". But also I was 12, and I wanted to accomplish things *now*, not wait until I was older to get the reward of being famous, and so the emotional impact of Anne Frank not getting to grow up didn't hit me in the same way.

My personal feelings on Anne Frank are "leave Anne Frank alone already". My educational feelings on Anne Frank are "teach her diary along with other diaries of kids who died in the Holocaust so the students can learn that the people who died in the Holocaust weren't NPCs, they weren't just numbers, they were real people and it was Actually Bad that they were murdered."

Three picture books and a Sanderson

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