Book-It '10! Book #56
The Fifty Books Challenge, year two! This was a library request.
Title: Anne Frank: The Anne Frank House Authorized Graphic Biography by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón
Details: Copyright 2010, Hill and Wang
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "Drawing on the unique historical sites, archives, expertise, and unquestioned authority of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, New York Times bestselling authors Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón have created the first authorized and exhaustive graphic biography of Anne Frank. Their account is complete, covering the lives of Anne’s parents, Edith and Otto; Anne's first years in Frankfurt; the rise of Nazism; the Franks' immigration to Amsterdam; war and occupation; Anne's years in the Secret Annex; betrayal and arrest; her deportation and tragic death in Bergen-Belsen; the survival of Anne's father; and his recovery and publication of her astounding diary.
Carefully researched for historical authenticity, the book includes numerous panels featuring images that have been painstakingly adapted from rare photographs of Anne and her family. A remarkable collaboration of talent, Anne Frank: The Anne Frank House Authorized Graphic Biography not only reflects the dedication of its authors but marks another milestone in the evolution of graphic nonfiction."
Why I Wanted to Read It: When I saw on the AP that Anne Frank's diary was getting "the graphic novel treatment" I was delighted. One of my favorite books from my early teen years was being translated into one of my favorite book formats of all time!
How I Liked It: Unfortunately, I was mistaken. This isn't the graphic novel adaption of the famous book. This is a sort-of biography with comic paneling.
Having developed a bit of familiarity with the work of Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón after reading The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation and After 9/11: America's War on Terror (2001- ) (I've been on the library waiting list that long for this book), my joy over this book was dampened somewhat since I found the aforementioned books lacking. Still, I held out hope.
Separate criticism has to be given for the art and the narrative. First, the narrative.
The book is, as I said, not a graphic novel adaption of the legendary book. Rather, it attempts in a jumbling fashion to combine a biography of Anne's family starting with her parents' respective upbringings. To the credit of the narration, the opening is framed by a few quotes from Anne ("Have I ever told you anything about our family?" Anne inquires). We are then lead rather blandly through a factual account of Anne's parents' courtship, marriage, and the births of their two children interspersed with coinciding world events. The dialog itself is as flat and expressionless as the previous two collaborations of Jacobson and Colón have been. We wind through Anne's life, including the era covered by her diary, just as flatly. Seemingly without changing tone, Anne and her family are betrayed, captured, and face imprisonment at the hands of the Nazis. The horrors of the camps are dictated in a choppy fashion and the casualties listed off with the continuing tone of other events (such as the Franks' wedding, their moving, et cetera) in the family's lives, which doesn't just feel unfinished, it feels insensitive. Military facts and dates intersperse the final outcomes of the war for the inhabitants of the Annex. We are then taken (the expressionless tone never changing) through Miep Gies's revelation of the diary to Otto Frank and his decision to publish it up through the success of the theatrical and cinematic productions of the book to the founding of the Anne Frank House and museum.
The art itself could make up for the bland, dry quality of the writing. It does not. The facial expressions and emotions are little more colorful than the narrative and, for as much as the book boasts its rare photographs, said photographs are "drawn over" (a drawn version of the photograph) are what's largely portrayed which is sadly about the only time any of the characters bear a realistic pose or expression. Perhaps the strain of having to imagine and recreate faces and expressions of real people is what leads to this stilted quality? I'm sure most readers would sacrifice the artist's effort at an accurate "likeness" (none of which are terribly striking, anyhow) in exchange for a human quality to the images.
Perhaps I am being unfair. I entered this book with extremely high expectations and with the fine examples of two gorgeous graphic novel classics (Persepolis and Maus) to take us through history with humanity and feeling. Granted, those two stories were written and illustrated by the individuals who lived them (or in the case of Maus, mostly lived them). Also, with this being a graphic novel adaption and on top of that, a very well-known story, it would understandably be difficult to create the personal feel of those two novels (although certainly it's a project that bears hunting for the best and most dedicated authors and artists that would attempt to create that feel). Instead, this book reads like an extremely restrained museum pamphlet with "off" drawings of the characters and events. Given who it is authorized by, it's not surprising that it would come off as a slightly expanded museum pamphlet. But it is surprising that the very people dedicated to preserving the memory of Anne Frank would allow a retelling of her life as impersonal and blank as the diary was richly personal and relatable. Given how vitally important Anne Frank is to history (a very human face to a casualty of war, intolerance, and genocide), the fact that this book was such a disappointment seems almost criminal.
Notable: Artist Ernie Colón's artwork can frequently resemble what it isn't, as I noted reviewing The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation.
Here, some of the drama of Anne's teenage crushes is portrayed (pg 68):
But wait... let's get a close-up of the new boy in Anne's life, Helmut Silberberg. Lower left hand panel:
While he does a reasonable job of looking like a fifteen-year-old boy in his four panels previous (Anne notes his glances on the page prior to this one), he suddenly has transformed into Marlon Brando circa A Streetcar Named Desire:
Maybe it's just me.
Title: Anne Frank: The Anne Frank House Authorized Graphic Biography by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón
Details: Copyright 2010, Hill and Wang
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "Drawing on the unique historical sites, archives, expertise, and unquestioned authority of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, New York Times bestselling authors Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón have created the first authorized and exhaustive graphic biography of Anne Frank. Their account is complete, covering the lives of Anne’s parents, Edith and Otto; Anne's first years in Frankfurt; the rise of Nazism; the Franks' immigration to Amsterdam; war and occupation; Anne's years in the Secret Annex; betrayal and arrest; her deportation and tragic death in Bergen-Belsen; the survival of Anne's father; and his recovery and publication of her astounding diary.
Carefully researched for historical authenticity, the book includes numerous panels featuring images that have been painstakingly adapted from rare photographs of Anne and her family. A remarkable collaboration of talent, Anne Frank: The Anne Frank House Authorized Graphic Biography not only reflects the dedication of its authors but marks another milestone in the evolution of graphic nonfiction."
Why I Wanted to Read It: When I saw on the AP that Anne Frank's diary was getting "the graphic novel treatment" I was delighted. One of my favorite books from my early teen years was being translated into one of my favorite book formats of all time!
How I Liked It: Unfortunately, I was mistaken. This isn't the graphic novel adaption of the famous book. This is a sort-of biography with comic paneling.
Having developed a bit of familiarity with the work of Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón after reading The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation and After 9/11: America's War on Terror (2001- ) (I've been on the library waiting list that long for this book), my joy over this book was dampened somewhat since I found the aforementioned books lacking. Still, I held out hope.
Separate criticism has to be given for the art and the narrative. First, the narrative.
The book is, as I said, not a graphic novel adaption of the legendary book. Rather, it attempts in a jumbling fashion to combine a biography of Anne's family starting with her parents' respective upbringings. To the credit of the narration, the opening is framed by a few quotes from Anne ("Have I ever told you anything about our family?" Anne inquires). We are then lead rather blandly through a factual account of Anne's parents' courtship, marriage, and the births of their two children interspersed with coinciding world events. The dialog itself is as flat and expressionless as the previous two collaborations of Jacobson and Colón have been. We wind through Anne's life, including the era covered by her diary, just as flatly. Seemingly without changing tone, Anne and her family are betrayed, captured, and face imprisonment at the hands of the Nazis. The horrors of the camps are dictated in a choppy fashion and the casualties listed off with the continuing tone of other events (such as the Franks' wedding, their moving, et cetera) in the family's lives, which doesn't just feel unfinished, it feels insensitive. Military facts and dates intersperse the final outcomes of the war for the inhabitants of the Annex. We are then taken (the expressionless tone never changing) through Miep Gies's revelation of the diary to Otto Frank and his decision to publish it up through the success of the theatrical and cinematic productions of the book to the founding of the Anne Frank House and museum.
The art itself could make up for the bland, dry quality of the writing. It does not. The facial expressions and emotions are little more colorful than the narrative and, for as much as the book boasts its rare photographs, said photographs are "drawn over" (a drawn version of the photograph) are what's largely portrayed which is sadly about the only time any of the characters bear a realistic pose or expression. Perhaps the strain of having to imagine and recreate faces and expressions of real people is what leads to this stilted quality? I'm sure most readers would sacrifice the artist's effort at an accurate "likeness" (none of which are terribly striking, anyhow) in exchange for a human quality to the images.
Perhaps I am being unfair. I entered this book with extremely high expectations and with the fine examples of two gorgeous graphic novel classics (Persepolis and Maus) to take us through history with humanity and feeling. Granted, those two stories were written and illustrated by the individuals who lived them (or in the case of Maus, mostly lived them). Also, with this being a graphic novel adaption and on top of that, a very well-known story, it would understandably be difficult to create the personal feel of those two novels (although certainly it's a project that bears hunting for the best and most dedicated authors and artists that would attempt to create that feel). Instead, this book reads like an extremely restrained museum pamphlet with "off" drawings of the characters and events. Given who it is authorized by, it's not surprising that it would come off as a slightly expanded museum pamphlet. But it is surprising that the very people dedicated to preserving the memory of Anne Frank would allow a retelling of her life as impersonal and blank as the diary was richly personal and relatable. Given how vitally important Anne Frank is to history (a very human face to a casualty of war, intolerance, and genocide), the fact that this book was such a disappointment seems almost criminal.
Notable: Artist Ernie Colón's artwork can frequently resemble what it isn't, as I noted reviewing The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation.
Here, some of the drama of Anne's teenage crushes is portrayed (pg 68):
But wait... let's get a close-up of the new boy in Anne's life, Helmut Silberberg. Lower left hand panel:
While he does a reasonable job of looking like a fifteen-year-old boy in his four panels previous (Anne notes his glances on the page prior to this one), he suddenly has transformed into Marlon Brando circa A Streetcar Named Desire:
Maybe it's just me.