Speaker 1: Hell Lloen, good morning.
Speaker 2: Hi.
Speaker 1: How are you absolutely fantastic? What is inside your imagination today?
Because you know how to write and that thing can't
just be shut off?
Speaker 3: Well, thank you, thank you. I appreciate that you.
Speaker 1: Have done something with your new book that really has
touched my wife and I in so many different ways,
and we could not wait to share this book with
everybody that we came in touch with. You have taken
something that we know, the story, but you've given it
a modern flavor to it.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. I really appreciate that to.
Speaker 1: Be in this moment. I mean, my wife has so
many different questions, as do I. But I mean, the
Diary of Anne Frank was so it was it was
considered to be required reading in high school. Do you
envision your book being the same thing, but done so
in a way that is less violent?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I'm afraid that the Diary is not
required reading at so many places.
Speaker 1: Not anymore.
Speaker 3: Wow, not anymore.
Speaker 2: And so my goal with my book would be to
have somebody read it and then go read the diary,
so that that would be my goal.
Speaker 1: Wow. One of the things that stands out inside this book,
and it's only because I believe in animals speak. The
magpies appear in this story a lot. Is this something
that you lived with or did Anne Frank, because this
is the first time I've heard of this.
Speaker 2: No, I think, you know what, you know why. I
think I started writing about those things because I started
working on this really during COVID, And during COVID I
felt like we're at least the city where I lived,
that animals started coming into the city. The cities were
kind of deserted, and so all of a sudden, we
had turkeys, we had coyotes, we had fox that these
were not city creatures, And I thought it's so interesting
that when people are destroying things that nature kind of
moves in to take over.
Speaker 3: So I think that was.
Speaker 2: Kind of the symbolism of what was happening with the magpies.
Speaker 1: Wow. Keeping history alive requires authors like yourself to have
the courage and the confidence to keep pushing a story forward.
And in my heart, I believe that people have lost
what's been going on with the Anne Frank story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so too, And I think that was
one of the reasons that you know, they you know,
the Anne Frank House was very.
Speaker 3: Interested in this project.
Speaker 2: Incredibly helpful, and their researchers and historians were great, and
I think that was part of the reason, is that
to make it be alive, to make history be alive
and current and have people remember what happened so that
we don't have it happening again.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Ann seemed to be the type of person who
always found a positive in things. She was always thinking
about the future and there's there had to be a positive.
Did this pour into your heart as well?
Speaker 2: One hundred percent?
Speaker 3: I mean that.
Speaker 2: I think that's why she so appealed to me when
I was, you know, twelve years old, because I was
not a positive person and reading her book really inspired me.
I mean, her idea that there was still good to
be found even in the most horrific circumstances was something
that was very meaningful for me and I think for
all of her readers.
Speaker 1: Now, will you ever release a version of this book
with tiny your print? And here's the reason why, Because
when my wife first picked up the book, she goes,
this must be a ya book, And I said, you
need to read this book because don't think of it
just because because it has bigger letters. And I think
that people judge a book by the size of the.
Speaker 2: Font, isn't that interesting?
Speaker 1: Well, I always like big fun to meet too, me too,
So I don't.
Speaker 3: Know, and so that doesn't bother me at all.
Speaker 2: I feel like it's also a really great book to
read with your kids. Yes, you know, I think, I
think that is a really great thing to do. But
you know, for me, this book is for everyone. I'm
always writing for myself, so you know, in a way,
I wrote this book for myself. So for me, it
feels like, yes, it's a children's book and children can
read it, but I also feel like it's really meant
for everyone.
Speaker 1: When I was in middle school, of course, it was
way back in the in the seventies, so that meant
that when we read the story about Anne Frank, it
was more of a black and white world. I in
my heart, while reading this book, it almost feels like
you've colorized it to the point where we go, oh,
oh my god. It's like it's it's right here.
Speaker 2: That's so interesting. Well, I feel like I wanted to
get the sense that it wasn't I wanted to give
the sense that it wasn't that far away, because it wasn't.
Speaker 3: That far away.
Speaker 2: I mean, the ant frank Has opened in nineteen sixty.
You know, that's not that long ago, and sometimes we
see it in black and white, like it happened so
long ago, but it's it's you know, I wanted it
to feel very current.
Speaker 3: So I really appreciate that.
Speaker 1: What did you learn in doing the research, because I mean,
it's always been here in front of us, but you
actually took the necessary steps to go back into the
past to bring it forward.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean one of the things that really affected me
was to see how the politics were changing all around
these people, and they didn't see it because it happened
very slowly.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: They had to give their names, they had to give
their addresses, they couldn't go out at night. It's like
a slow progression, and then all of a sudden they
couldn't do anything. And just like the slow build where
they were just really taken unawares, and they also didn't
want to know because it was so horrifying.
Speaker 1: I feel so foolish that I didn't know Anne's life
before going into hiding. It seems like that in my
memories start with the hiding.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, no, I think that's what it is for
all of us. So I think that was one of
the interesting things about this book was to find out, Okay,
so what happened before that, what led up to this,
what was her life like and the life of her
family like before hiding.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because we've sat down with our granddaughter and we've
explained to her. I said, if you would have been
in this period because of your grandmother's history, you would
have gone to a concentration camp. And that scared the
hell out of her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is really scary to think about what hatred
can do and how people make other people into the
other and you know, tell stories that you know, there's
all kinds of different storytelling, but there are stories to
scare people, to upset people, to alienate people, and then
there are stories to heal people and to remember what
really happened.
Speaker 1: We need a book like this to help locate peace
for tomorrow, and it's going to require the YA readers
as well as those that are before them or just
a little bit after them, because if you show us
empowerment as well as encouragement.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I hope, so, thank you. I really hope that's
what it does.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Because I mean, it's like I said before, it
takes authors like yourself to reach out there, and there's
a lot of things to be reaching through and you're
doing this well.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: It's something that I really wanted to do, and I
feel like, you know, I was so affected by this
story and I wanted people to have that experience of
being affected by our story.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like that we've lost something? Because I
mean that's one of the things that you do. You
put the importance on remembering and honoring things that we
have lost.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think, you know, I think in this modern world,
things don't last as long. You know, things a throwaway,
you know, whether whether it's art or whether it's history,
and that people don't remember to the same extent because
there's so much information coming in and I think it's
just really important to remember what happened.
Speaker 1: Was it interesting to you to see that Anne Frank
was very playful, that she was witty and mischievous.
Speaker 3: Yes, it really was.
Speaker 2: She was. She got into trouble at school.
Speaker 1: See, that's humanizing her. This See once again, you have
given us the opportunity to see a different side of history.
Speaker 2: Yes, I think it's really important to humanize it and
to have her be a real person not just an icon,
but a real person.
Speaker 1: Yeah. What do you foresee when it comes to this
book getting out there into the hands of readers.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, my hope is always that you know,
people will have a personal response, a personal reaction, that
it will be meaningful for them, that it will be
to them what the books that I love are to me,
and that you know, they'll carry it with them and
want to know more about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Do you find yourself doing other books of history
like this in the in the year's a come?
Speaker 2: Uh? You know, I'm not sure. You know, it's really
a lot of work.
Speaker 3: This is a very.
Speaker 2: Special book and I so wanted to do it, and
it was kind of a full circle moment for me
having started wanting to be a writer, you know, because
of this book, and then having the honor to work
on this book. So, you know, I don't know what's
going to happen next.
Speaker 1: To tell you the truth, did you send a copy
to the museum?
Speaker 3: They have it? Yes?
Speaker 1: Oh God, that's got to be so special.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, no, it definitely is. They have been great.
Speaker 1: Well. I wish you could have been in the living
room when I handed my wife this book, because her
world stopped. She literally looked at the book as she
was like going, and it shook something inside of her.
And I think other people are going to feel the
same way.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you, I hope so, and please thank her
for me.
Speaker 1: Are you going to work your way into making making
a modernized documentary or do we let history handle that?
Speaker 2: You know that that is out of my hands.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't know what that is. I mean
for me.
Speaker 2: The great thing about because it is that it's so personal,
it's so intimate. I feel like reading is not like
anything else, and so you know, I'm just thinking of.
Speaker 1: It as the book that's so interesting. You say that,
because that's how I feel about radio with zoom and
all that kind of stuff. People go, how come I
can't see your face because I'm a radio guy, Because
that's what that's what it's all about. Same is true
with reading for you then, right, it's.
Speaker 2: Very intimate, it's personal, and you know you're speaking directly
to somebody.
Speaker 3: It's very similar in that way.
Speaker 1: Wow. Where can people go to find out more about
you and they can grow with you and give you
some love?
Speaker 2: Oh that's a nice Well they can go to I
have a Facebook page and Instagram page at a Hoffman
writer and I have I also have a website www.
Alice Hoffman dot com. Or you can go to Scholastic,
the publisher. They have an Instagram page and a website
and you can find that information there.
Speaker 1: Please come back to the show anytime in the future.
The door is always going to be open for you.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: No, thank you so much. You'd be brilliant today.
Speaker 3: Okay, thank you yah.