Zlata's Diary [Mass Market Paperback]

Zlata writes as any girl would write, in the beginning. The early part of her diary (it begins in September 1991) deals with ideas about school starting and what happened last summer. Short entries into a girl's diary, not too deep, somewhat interesting but also very typical. She could be any girl in any city in this country. She talks about her friends, her favorite TV shows, her music lessons, and enjoying pizza.

She is 11 years old.

But in less than a year, all of that changes.

She is writing letters and entries recounting horrible events of warfare. Less than a year after she was wondering about the top songs on MTV and her music and friends, she was writing profound letters of love, life and survival.

She recounts hiding in dark, ugly cellars, and hearing bombs dropping, and being very afraid. She writes of her friend Nina who died in of shrapnel in the brain -- another 11 year old girl, just like Zlata. They went to kindergarten together, they played together. Now Nina was dead.

Zlata and members of her family escaped to Paris by December 1993; the diary ends at that point. Zlata grew up tremendously, much as Anne Frank did, during those few years of the war. She learned the terminology and dangers of war as well as any professional soldier. She learned the horrors and deprivations. She also remained a little girl, with her childish, childlike hope for peace for all.

She escaped, but how many didn't? Published in 1994 while there was still fighting in Sarajevo, this is a book of hope. And sadly the fighting hasn't stopped in that part of the world. Children have lost parents, siblings, family members, friends, and their whole way of life.

It is for them that Zlata wrote her diary. We should remember them.

It is a valuable & poignant reminder for younger readers about what, to many of them, is a "forgotten" war; the Bosnian conflict that is now so overshadowed by the Iraq/Afghanistan wars. For this I gave it the 3 stars; for actual literary merit I think I would have to give it one star or so!

But ...

Those of us who were adults during the time of the Bosnian war years we will have vivid images of the bomb-shattered cities, the displaced people and of course the piles of bodies unearthed from the many mass graves.

This is a child's-view book and as such much of the true horror & impact of the larger conflict is ignored.

What I didn't like about the book is that it is presented as a "diary" but in reality it is written, at least in the latter part, as a contrived document MEANT for publication.

There is absolutely no comparison to Anne Frank's work here; Anne Frank wrote for herself in TRULY horrific conditions and her work is enduring and incredibly moving and much more "realistic" than the more artificial format of "Zlata's Diary".

Go ahead & read "Zlata's Diary" & give it to your children/students but please be sure to also present some other information from other sources about the times & events in order to give a truer picture of the period.