Number 4 loves to read.
LOOOOOOVES it.
She loves to read inside.
She loves to read outside.
Her favorite special at school is “definitely, definitely Library.”
Yesterday she came home from school with a book about Anne Frank.
It wasn’t like a dumbed down, elementary school level, Anne Frank picture book.
It was a non-fiction chapter book.
She was very excited to read it.
I told her it was inappropriate for a kid her age, and that she had to bring it back to school.
She did.
But first I guess she decided to read it.
I found this out today when she came home from school, walked in the door, and proudly exclaimed, “Mommy! I finished the Anne Frank book!”
I gave her a look.
“No you didn’t,” I said.
“Yes, I did,” she told me.
“Mommy, did you know that Anne Frank was captured by the Germans and sent to a concentration camp?”
Ugh. I was hoping she had learned that from the back cover or something.
“When she got there, the Germans shaved her head, and she went to a special women’s room.”
Shit.
That probably wasn’t on the back cover.
“The women had to work, but a lot of the women died because they got diseases.
They still had to work until they were too weak to work.”
She wasn’t done.
“Anne Frank got a disease and died when she was 15.
Her sister died only a couple days later,” Number 4 explained.
There was more.
“Their mom died too.
After she slowly lost her mind.
And Mommy, do you know what they did to a lot of the people in the concentration camps?
The Germans gassed them.”
This was getting better and better.
“And Mommy, guess what they did then?
Then they burned their bodies.”
Great.
“Now do you believe that I read the book, Mommy?”
I did.
What I don’t believe is that my kid needs special permission from me to check out a Harry Potter or Goosebumps book from school.
But a book about gassing, torturing, and murdering a bunch of innocent people?
Eh.
That, apparently, is no big deal.
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Wow. Just-wow!
Don’t get me started. Last year my (then) third grade daughter took Anne Frank’s Diary (unabridged) from the elementary school library and read it during independent reading time at school. This 8 year old Jewish girl was not ready. There were many nightmares. I had a lot to say at school. I was told all about her reading level…..which is all well and good but she was not emotionally ready for this and CERTAINLY not without my husband and I knowing about it.
Since your child has already been exposed to this, I highly recommend Number the Stars by Lois Lowry…..it is important for kids to know that there were people fighting for justice.
I am all about kids learning about the Holocaust – I’ve taught some myself – but not this young without parent involvement.