Book Description
for Anna Is Still Here by Ida Vos
From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
Anna Markus, a young Dutch Jewish girl, has survived years of hiding during World War II to be reunited with her parents at war's end. But her aunt's and uncle's and her best friend, Marga, all have disappeared. Her parents refuse to talk about what happened to any of them, or about their own experiences during the war. "I know everything," Anna tells them after she has a dream in which Marga is dead, but she doesn't, really, and the silence in her home is both frightening and enraging. Then Anna meets Mrs. Neumann, the woman in the white house where she has imagined a German soldier was hiding, waiting to capture her still. Mrs. Neumann's young daughter, like Anna, was hidden during the war. Unlike Anna, Mrs. Neumann's daughter has not yet returned. Mrs. Neumann is willing to talk to Anna about what happened, and to share her pain and her hope, and this helps Anna begin to come to terms with her own experience. This sequel to HIDE AND SEEK (Houghton Mifflin, 1991) tells the next chapter in the lives of children who survived the Holocaust, but still had to struggle to reclaim their lives. (Ages 10-13)
CCBC Choices 1993. © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 1993. Used with permission.