The Diary of Anne Frank

Why it’s on the list: Two years of diary entries by a girl of thirteen to fifteen, hiding with seven other people in concealed rooms behind her father’s Amsterdam business until the annexe was raided in August 1944. Published in 1947 by Otto Frank, the only survivor of the eight.

Where I heard about it

• Founders Classical Academy — on the seventh-grade reading list at this classical school in Lewisville, Texas, posted by the Classic Learning Test (September 2026) as an example of what a classical curriculum assigns. It is the only first-person document of the Holocaust on the list, assigned to students the age Anne was when she wrote it, and read alongside Animal Farm the same year. Full sequence: Founders Classical Academy Reading List.

About this edition

Anne was revising the diary for publication when the annexe was raided. The original Dutch edition, Het Achterhuis, appeared in 1947; the first English edition in 1952.

Connections

• Founders Classical Academy Reading List — the curriculum this came from; 56 unique titles across 5th through 12th grade.
• Classical Education — the movement whose canon this list is.
• Anne Frank
• The Holocaust
• Literature