Anna Is Still Here

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From Publishers Weekly
Vos's autobiographical Hide and Seek ranks among the best middle grade fiction about the Holocaust; this story, a sequel of sorts, is even better. Anna, a Dutch Jewish girl, has survived the war in hiding. She returns to school--a fifth-grader although she's 13--and is reunited with her parents, who cannot yet bring themselves to tell her about their own ordeal (they spent years in a forest, living below the ground). She knows a little about the concentration camps--enough to be aware that her best friend has been murdered in one--and she struggles to accommodate her knowledge, her sense of her parents' vulnerability, her own deeply inculcated terrors and her eagerness to rejoin the world. Vos conveys Anna's heartbreaking and heroic efforts with exemplary economy, and the anguish of Anna's story is balanced by a subplot, however contrived, about another survivor being reunited against all odds with her seven-year-old daughter. Vos looks beyond the usual "happy" ending of survivor stories, which typically conclude with liberation or shortly thereafter, to pose more thoughtful questions about the price of survival; her answers are hard-won and profoundly stirring. Ages 8-12.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Kirkus Reviews
The author of the autobiographical novel Hide and Seek (1991), based on her own WW II experiences, again uses linked vignettes to evoke the painful difficulties, after the war, of resuming a normal life. Anna, 13, has just emerged from three years of hiding, during which she rarely spoke; she still imagines that a figure lurking behind a curtain in a nearby house is a Nazi, and she has nightmares fueled by the terrible things she knows her parents are keeping from her. The earliest scenes- -Father patiently coaxing Anna to speak loudly again; Anna discovering that the dreaded figure is actually Mrs. Neumann, another Jewish survivor, whose whole being is focused on the hope that her little daughter, Fannie, may be alive--are among the strongest and most telling. Others, depicting the prejudice still rife in Holland and the sometimes callous lack of sympathy for Jewish survivors, as well as the bitterness toward collaborators and the legal support available against racism, are vividly authentic. Weakest is Mrs. Neumann's reunion with Fannie; such miracles did occur, but this one seems contrived, while the focus wavers when it leaves Anna; moreover, the pain in parting Fannie and her foster parents is mentioned but not really addressed. Still, a compelling book, even stronger than its fine predecessor. (Fiction. 8-14) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Review
"A compelling book, even stronger than its fine predecessor." -- Review --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Review
"A compelling book, even stronger than its fine predecessor." (Kirkus Reviews with Pointers ) --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Product Description
Thirteen-year-old Anna, who was a "hidden child" in Nazi-occupied Holland during World War II, gradually learns to deal with the realities of being a survivor. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Dutch