Seventh Independant Reading Post:

Choice #3 --  Fact File:  List five to ten facts from your book/film and then give your personal reflection of each fact.

Book: A diary of a young girl by Anne Frank

Fact #1: Anne wrote her diary in a letter format and always wrote it to "Kitty". I feel like Anne was writing to a friend that she maybe cared very deeply for, or maybe a family member that she really hope stayed alive during the holocaust and everything that was happening. Another possibility is that I think that like many people, she needed an escape and this obviously was to write the letters in the first place, but she had to go as far as to create an imaginary friend that she had learned to accept was never going to wright back.

Fact #2: Anne did end up dying in a concentration camp, but did not die in the gassing chambers. Anne Frank was sent of to concentration camp with her mother and sister, but not her father whom she could have assumed was dead. Her mother died of starvation and the sister died from typhus. And although the reader has been so hooked by the story of this young girl, she met her fate the same way her sister did and I believe that this gives a powerful feeling to the reader that makes the reader come to the realization that because typhus nowadays is only caught by vermin's and rodents, that during the holocaust the Jews, in the Nazi's eyes, were nothing but rats and mice.

Fact #3: Following up on the beginning of the fact #2, there was only one survivor between Anne, the sister, the parents, the van pels family, and Fritz Pfeffer. By conducting some research online, I found out that Otto Frank, Anne's father was the only survivor out of the names mentioned above and while he was in concentration camp he found out that his wife and daughters were dead. This shows that anything can happen and things shouldn't be assumed in times like the holocaust.

Fact #4: Some people think that the book should be banned from being learned and studied in school because of this line on page 129 "There are little folds of skin all over the place, you can hardly find it. The little hole underneath is so terribly small that I simply can't imagine how a man can get in there, let alone how a whole baby can get out!"Although this fact is completely normal for girls to wonder, some people think that this line along with other ones are pornographic and not good for students to read.


Fact #5: After finding the diary it was actually realized that the diary that the story was written in was actually an autograph book, but after it was full she then switched to two notebooks that ended up becoming a 360 page report. I think that the fact that Anne Frank used a diary to write her story shows that although the hard times she was still trying to make the best of the situation and used whatever that she could find.

Movie: Saving Private Ryan

Fact #1: People with missing limbs in the movie were actually amputee's that were issued prosthetic legs and were taken off just for the purpose of shooting the movie. This movie was made in 1998, a year after I was born and this shows how far movie shooting has advanced through the years because if this much effort was put into making a movie thats 15 years old, then I can't imagine the technology and effort that they put into creating movies today.

Fact #2:  There was one scene in the movie that actually showed a very important moment in history. This important moment was the turning point of World War II in Europe, and this happened during the Allied Invasion at Normandy.

Fact #3: There was only one real person that was shown in the film. All the other soldiers and names of the soldiers are fictional or fake, although, the events in the movie were based on actual wars. There was one historical figure and this was General George C. Marshall, which was played by Harve Presnell. Including a real actor shows how much realism they wanted to include in the movie to give the reader a sense that they are actually experiencing what the director Steven Spielberg is trying to portray.

Fact #4: Tom Sizemore, one of the actors for this movie was almost kicked off appearing in the movie because of his off screen problems. Tom Sizemore was in a drug rehab in 1998 and was almost kicked off the cast and was threatened to have the entire film re shot with a different actor if Tom Sizemore failed one drug test.


Fact #5: Although the huge amounts of money that was put into creating the film, it did not win the oscar best picture award, and instead was Shakespear in love. Upwards of $13 million was put into the creation of this movie and despite the hard efforts in creating this film, it did not win. However the director Steven Spielberg won the best actor of the year which made up for his sadness for not winning best film.