Not­ed author Alice Hoff­man, well known for her adult fic­tion, has now gift­ed us with When We Flew Away, a mid­dle-grade nov­el about Anne Frank, her fam­i­ly, and the world around her in the years before she wrote her famous diary and was hid­den in the Secret Annex.

We meet Anne in Ams­ter­dam after her fam­i­ly has fled Ger­many. She makes friends, explores the city, deep­ens her fam­i­ly rela­tion­ships, and con­nects with a first boyfriend. She is a young girl who is inter­est­ed in every­one and every­thing and wants to have fun.

All around her, the Nazis are gain­ing strength. The Jews first face strin­gent lim­i­ta­tions, then harsh oppres­sion. Hoff­man adheres close­ly to the his­tor­i­cal frame­work of Anne’s life, fill­ing it in with the girl’s thoughts, dreams, and con­tin­u­ous flights of fan­cy. Hoff­man imag­ines the con­ver­sa­tions Anne shared with those in her imme­di­ate world, shin­ing a clear light on her char­ac­ter and devel­op­ment. The book leaves read­ers with a poignant and heart-rend­ing pic­ture of a young girl who is just begin­ning to blos­som when she’s forced into hid­ing, a con­cen­tra­tion camp, and, ulti­mate­ly, a trag­ic death.

The Anne of the diary, who encap­su­lat­ed the expe­ri­ences of many of Europe’s Jews through her thought­ful, evoca­tive writ­ing, per­me­ates every page of this nov­el. Just like Anne’s diary itself, When We Flew Away will serve as an intro­duc­tion to life in World War II Europe, which began with grow­ing Nazi men­ace and cul­mi­nat­ed with the destruc­tion of Euro­pean Jew­ish life. Hoff­man’s prose con­tains the per­fect blend of his­tor­i­cal real­i­ty and gen­tle fic­tion­al­iza­tion. Read­ers will be inspired to learn more about the Holo­caust; they might even want to read the renowned diary on which this sto­ry is based.