I still find it remarkable how skilled a writer Anne Frank was at such a young age, especially considering she was her only critic, editor and motivator. Though cramped in a tight space for two years without the opportunity for outside experience and learning, it did not appear to have stifled her growth in the slightest. One wonders what she would have become had she lived. ( )

"The worst of it is that most people go alone through this world." (pg. 93)

One of the most striking things when reading Anne Frank's diary is the moment you realise she might well become a great writer. The reader usually has this realisation around the same time Anne does: the diary entries begin to show more focus, more complexity, and some of them even read like Anne sat down that day, in the Secret Annexe, and tackled her diary entry as though it was a short story to be written. And then, of course, it's all taken away in an instant, in a series of bangs and yells and the sound of army boots; a brutal sequence which we are mercifully spared in the book itself – unlike Anne – but which is unreachably difficult to reconcile with the sheer goodness, precocious maturity and outright talent demonstrated in the preceding pages. Before reading the diary, you imagine its heart-breaking power to be solely in its circumstances: 'a young girl, taken by the Nazis, and here's her diary'. But what becomes clear as you read it is that a potentially great writer was also lost, who, had she lived, might well have produced a work we would all look on and marvel at.

Tales from the House Behind is exhibit A – the only exhibit – for this theory. It collects a series of writings that Anne wrote in the Secret Annexe alongside her diary (the 'House Behind' being a mooted title for the diary she hoped to publish after the war (pg. 10)) – fables, short stories, and the opening chapters of a novel she titled Cady's Life. I'm not going to sit here and claim it's great literature, but it is impressive that a girl in her early teens could show such evident maturity, empathy and skills of observation, as well as that mind's-eye that a writer must have in order to translate those qualities into fictional narratives and moral and emotional landscapes. This is very much, as G. B. Stern writes in his Introduction, a "writer in embryo" (pg. 9).

It's exciting, too, to contemplate what she might have achieved; even in 1949, when Tales from the House Behind was first published (two years after the diary), Anne would still be only 20 years old. The lost – or cruelly stolen – potential is staggering, and leaves the reader bereft. It's hard not to interpret her lines in light of her tragic end: the opening story ends with "To be interrupted just as you are thinking of a glorious future!" (pg. 20), whilst the final part of the book sees the protagonist Cady, in Cady's Life, coming to terms with the fact that her Jewish friend Mary has been taken by a "troop of brutal armed men", and Cady imagines her "locked up in a cell, wearing rags, and with a wizened and emaciated face" (pg. 122). It is clear that Anne knew what was coming for her: she lived with that fear every day, and it makes her even braver, if that were possible, that she looked it squarely in the face, as every real writer would hope to do, and turned it into art. Fledgling art, but art nonetheless. She recognised the power of her gift – "I have often wondered why people trust one another so little, why they are so sparing with 'real' words? With a few sentences great difficulties and misunderstandings can often be solved" (pg. 116) – and whilst such a gift could not save her at the end, there being no fate or cosmic justice available to mark her as one to be protected, it did ensure that she did more of worth in her short span of years than all the legions of jackbooted anti-Semite thugs combined. "How lovely to think that no one need wait a moment, we can start now, start slowly changing the world!", she writes in one entry (pg. 101). Such were Anne's qualities that she managed to change the world even when no longer in it. She did it in idle moments, with an innocent joy, while waiting for an opportunity just to begin her life – a freedom that was denied her by people much lesser than herself. ( )

Anne Frank has been my hero since I first read her book in the 5th grade...this book only helps me further my love of her. Anne would have been an exceptional writer and I found great joy in her varied writings. Some of the writings within the book are from her diary but others are from Anne's vivid imagination. Her fables are pure joy and explain her love of nature and positive thinking. The world would have been a very different place if Anne Frank had lived and followed through on her path as a writer. ( )

A wonderful supplement to her diary. In some ways, I even enjoyed this more. I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in Anne Frank, a truly remarkable young lady. ( )

Beautifully thoughtful and meaningful diary entries and short stories by a talented young writer. Enjoyed very much. ( )