When Anne felt discouraged, she turned to her diary, a place where she could be totally free.
Anne Frank's spirit and her gift for writing call to mind a modern hero, a boy named Mattie Stepanek. Like Anne, Mattie was a writer. Before he was fourteen years old, he had published six books of poetry, including the bestseller Heartsongs. He wanted to be known as a peacemaker and his poetry reflected this wish to make the world a better place. He was a charming and confident public speaker. He was able to fulfill his dreams of meeting his own hero, former President Jimmy Carter, and appearing on Oprah Winfrey's show to talk about poetry and peace. Like Anne, Mattie always tried to put the brightest possible face on everything. It was not easy. He too was a prisoner, but not in a secret apartment or a concentration camp. He was a prisoner in his own body. He was born with a rare form of muscular dystrophy and spent his life in a wheelchair, breathing through a tube. Like Anne, he was a vibrant human being. When he wrote,...
Sadly, like Anne, he did not even live to see the end of his teens. He died in 2004, at the age of 14 (www.mattieonline.com). Fortunately, his words live on, as do the words of Anne Frank.
Anne Frank was a hero because she faced her circumstances with courage and figured out a way to cope. Her writing made her free and her spirit is with us today because her writing survived. Without knowing she would do so, she educated the world about the horrors of the Holocaust by telling her story (Kramer). Because of her, we will never forget.
Works Cited
Anne Frank Museum Amsterdam. (n.d.). Retrieved 3 January 2011.
Frank, Anne. (2010). The Diary of a Young Girl. Kindle edition.
Kramer, Ann. Anne Frank: The Young Writer Who Told the World Her Story.
Miep Gies: Her Own Story . (n.d.). Retrieved 4 January 2011., http://www.miepgies.nl/en/>.
Stepanek, Mattie J.T. (2005) Mattie Online. Retrieved 4 January 2011.
