Anne Frank considers diary writing to be a strange experience. She gives two reasons for this. Firstly, she has never written anything earlier and secondly, she thinks that neither she nor anyone else would be interested in the thoughts of a teenager. However, she feels an inner compulsion to write, so she decides to pen down her thoughts.

One day, when Anne was feeling unhappy and depressed, she recalled the saying that ‘paper has more patience than people’. She continued to brood about this thought and concluded that it was indeed right. She decided that she would not let anyone, other than a true friend, read what she would write in the stiff-backed notebook – her ‘diary’.

She records that the reason which prompted her to write a diary is that she does not have any friend. Clarifying the absence of a true friend in her life, Anne says that she might have seemingly friendly people around her (loving parents, a sixteen-year-old elder sister, thirty friendly people, and loving aunts) but a true close friend is missing. She can talk only about ordinary things to these people but she cannot share intimate secrets with anyone of them. She accepts that her reserved nature prevents her from having any close friends. She decides to write a “diary” as she feels that her nature is not likely to change.

She considers her diary to be her imaginary “long-awaited” friend and names it ‘Kitty’. She also resolves to adopt a novel method of writing it because nobody would understand a single word of what she writes, if she begins writing straight away. So, she gives a brief sketch of her family in the beginning.

Anne writes that her father is an adorable man and had married her mother when he was thirty-six and she was twenty-five. Her elder sister, Margot, was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1926 and she herself was born on 12 June 1929. She lived in Frankfurt until the age of four and in September 1933, her father emigrated to Holland accompanied by her mother, Edith Hollander Frank. Meanwhile Anne and her sister were sent to Aachen to live with their grandmother. However, in December that year, her elder sister-joined her parents while she reached later on Margot’s birthday.

In Holland, she was admitted to the Montessori nursery school. Giving an interesting description of her school life, Anne makes a special mention of Mrs. Kuperus, her teacher in the sixth form and the headmistress of the school. She was so dear to her that they both had a tearful farewell at the end ofthe year.

Anne’s grandmother fell ill in the summer of 1941 and had to be operated upon. So, Anne had a simple birthday celebration that year. Sadly, her grandmother died in January 1942. Remembering her fondly and lovingly, Anne’s birthday celebration in June 1942 had a candle lit for her grandmother along with the rest.

Anne next writes about June 20,1942 – an account of her classroom experiences. She writes in her diary that her entire class was terrified and nervous because the school teachers were going to have a meeting to discuss the annual results. However, Anne and her friend G. N. had a hearty laugh at the two boys sitting behind them – C. N. and Jacques. These boys had put at stake their entire holiday savings betting their respective results. Their silly arguments irritated Anne but neither her angry outbursts nor her friend’s pleading glances had any effect on the two boys.

Here, Anne records her observation that her class had quite a few dumb students and nearly a quarter of the class needed to be kept back. She also observes that teachers are “the most unpredictable creatures” so the results could not be guessed.

Anne was not worried about herself and her girlfriends. She was sure they would all make it to the next grade. Although she was a bit doubtful about Mathematics, they all waited patiently and tried to encourage and cheer up each other.

Anne was quite friendly with all her teachers except, the “old fogey” Mr Keesing, her Mathematics teacher, who always remained angry with her because of her talkative nature. He warned her constantly to give up this habit. When all his warnings failed, he punished her by assigning extra homework. Anne was asked to write an essay on “A Chatterbox”. She did not know what to write but noted down the topic and tucked it in her bag. After that she tried to remain quiet in the class.

In the evening, after finishing her routine home work, she thought about the topic ‘chatterbox’. She decided to write convincing arguments for being a ‘chatterbox’ in place of rambling and writing haphazardly. In her three page assignment, she wrote that talking is natural to all students. Talking becomes more compulsive for her as
her mother is a habitual talker and one cannot do much about inherited traits.

Mr. Keesing, her teacher, had a good laugh at her arguments and Anne resumed talking through the next lesson. The teacher then gave her another assignment as punishment – “An Incorrigible Chatterbox.” Anne handed over this assignment and things remained fine for the next two lessons. However, during the third lesson, Mr. Keesing lost patience and told her to write an essay titled, “Quack, Quack Quack, Said Mistress Chatterbox.” This made everyone, including Anne, laugh. However, she felt that she had already written enough about the topic, so she must write something new. Sanne, one of her friends, who was good at writing poetry, offered to write the entire essay in verse. This overjoyed Anne because she wanted to play the joke on her teacher who was trying to make her write on a ridiculous topic. The poem turned out to be a beautiful one. It was about a mother duck and a father swan with “three baby ducklings” who quacked and quacked and quacked. This angered the father swan and he bit the ducklings to death. The joke obviously was on Mr. Keesing. He was amused to read the poem and took the joke sportingly. He read it to the entire class and several other classes, adding his own comments. From then on, Anne was never given assignment as punishment and was also allowed to talk in the class. Mr. Keesing too was a changed man and always cracked jokes.