The Diary of Anne Frank remains in the Vero Beach High School library, but the Florida school has removed a retelling of the story, Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation, after a conservative group charged the book minimizes the Holocaust.
The real issue is sex: The adaptation "shows the protagonist walking in a park, enchanted by female nude statues, and later proposing to a friend that they show each other their breasts," notes AP.
Other books about Anne Frank remain in the school system's libraries, as well as copies of her diary, published in 1947. Florida law requires schools to teach about the Holocaust, a district spokeswoman said.
The graphic novel uses only 5 percent of the diary's text, changes some wording and adds scenes not in the diary, writes Matt Lebovic in The Times of Israel.
In addition to the breasts, it includes Anne's flirtation with a slightly older Jewish boy, Peter, also hiding with his family in the annex of her father's Amsterdam office building. After 25 months in hiding, they were betrayed to the Nazis and sent to concentration camps. Only Anne's father survived.
"Frank’s diary became one of the most famous narratives of the Holocaust, and because it’s written from the perspective of a normal adolescent living under the most abnormal circumstances, it humanized war and genocide," writes Stav Ziv in an Atlantic review.
"While the graphic adaptation captures some of Frank’s personality, energy, pain, and creative ability, it's so abridged that readers are shortchanged on her inner monologue, on the beautifully articulated and nuanced view of the world, and on the three-dimensional narration that brings you with Frank into the annex."
. . . the story becomes shorter, neater, and more naive. That might make sense if the adaptation were a primer geared toward children who aren’t ready to tackle the diary yet, but the inclusion of entries on sex and Frank’s lesson on the female anatomy indicates otherwise.
The coverage of the story is a "media hoax," charges Stacey Matthews on Legal Insurrection.