Mirjam Pressler (1940–2019)

Halinka lives in a "home," an orphanage, of sorts, in post-WW2 Germany. Her mother was abusive, but she longs to live with her aunt, whom she describes as loving and wanting to take care of Halinka but can't until she finds a husband. Halinka hesitates to make friends in the home because she believes opening up to people will lead to pain, but she slowly learns that that's not always the case.

This is not exactly a happy story, but it does end on a hopeful upturn. It's well-written, despite show more Halinka being a little too observant and articulate for her age (a constant issue with middle grade books written in the first person), and the characters are very nicely drawn. I love that certain plot points are left unresolved when resolving them would have made the ending too pat and saccharine. As it stands, the story is perhaps a bit darker than it would have been, but much more realistic and satisfactory. Halinka is a complicated little girl, and I love her for it. show less

This was a perfect comfort read, especially for my 10-year-old self. I’m sure it would have been a favorite book of mine around that time.

I was immediately engaged. It was a very quick read and hard to put down.

I adore the narrator main character, with her strengths and flaws. I appreciate that she’s a reader, and thoughtful and introspective, and a survivor, and that she’s not always honest. In other words, she seems so real. I also like that the reader gets to know quite a bit about show more the other children in the home and things about some of the adults too. I also appreciated that a lot is left unknown and up to the readers’ imaginations and guesses. I think the way the story showed the girls and how they coped with their situations was very authentic. The characters are truly three-dimensional and have depth, the children and the adults too. The latter often isn’t the case in children’s books.

It reminded me a bit of The Secret Language though I thought this book was better than that one.

I felt emotionally touched, I was always interested, and I sometimes got hungry, typical of me when I’m reading books where food is described in great detail, especially when there are hungry characters and characters not getting quite enough food or not normally getting to choose what they eat.

The inside book cover mentions that the girls (in Halinka’s room) are 12 (well they’re in two grades so I’d guess different ages by at least a year) but they did seem a bit younger to me. Maybe 10? Maybe 11? Given their backgrounds and circumstances and given that this is historical fiction and not contemporary, I guess they could seem a bit younger to me than they are.

I’m not taking off any stars but there were things that bother me, such as the fat shaming, though in these girls’ cases, getting not quite enough food to be fully satisfied, it’s perfectly understandable.

I think this English language edition was translated with U.S. audiences in mind. The way they say the school grades is very American.

Anyway, I loved it and I’m so glad that I read it. This is the third book I’ve recently read that worked to get me out of a reading slump. Superb book!

Recommended for many readers, especially girls 9-12, and people who work with neglected and abused kids, institutionalized kids, and families in crisis.

ETA: I should think more before I write. I want to add that there is a lot of humor in this book despite its generally sad stories. show less

There is no doubt that Anne Frank was an extraordinary writer and human being. Her family, though, until the rise of the Nazis, led very ordinary lives, and these simply do not make for fascinating reading. Yes, absolutely, this material should be recorded because they matter, because every human being matters, but there is really nothing compelling about the material. Were this not about Anne's family, no one would read it.
Unforgivable is the author's decision to "recreate" conversations show more and invent actions to tell the story. There are already a ridiculous amount of accusations that the Holocaust is fiction, and literary devices used when writing of it are absolutely unnecessary. show less

I can remember when my father gave me The Diary of Anne Frank to read, I was twelve years old, we had just moved and he solemnly handed me the book. Over the years, I have read it four times. It made a huge impression on me so when I saw this book, Treasures from the Attic by Mirjam Pressler, I had to read it. Anne Frank’s aunt Helene Elias (Otto Frank’s sister) had passed away and left a huge amount of family letters, poems and pictures in her home. As the blurb on the inside cover says show more over 6,000 documents.

What this book does is make a fuller picture of Anne, her family and the life of Jews in Germany in particular in Frankfurt. The author goes back to 1492, the year the Jews were required to live in a walled part of Frankfort. They were locked in at night and their occupations strictly limited to what was not wanted by the rest of the population. Over time, the accordion of oppression swung open and shut as there were looser or more restrictions. This part is so fascinating that I want to read more about the history of Frankfort.

Then the author weaves the stories of Anne’s ancestors on both side with copies of the letters, poems and paintings and later poems. It was a surprise to see a family so talented in poetry. And Anne’s family were exceptionally loving and caring. When the book progressed to the period of the concentration camps and their aftermath, I had to stop reading and cry. The story is so sad and so maddening that so many are gone and for reasons of being hated. The searching for relatives and the awareness of the many who died was not neglected in this book. Her father learned about what his daughter was really like from her diary and we would read it learned what is was like to live in constant fear of being exposed and living a very restricted life. This book is like the frame around Anne Frank’s picture.

I strongly recommend reading this memoir of a family in very heartbreaking times. show less