Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón are writing and illustrating Anne Frank: The Anne Frank House Authorized Graphic Biography (Hill and Wang, $30 hardcover; $16.95 trade paperback). It’s “the crown on our careers," said Jacobson. He and Colón, veterans of the comics and graphic novel genres, have become specialists in non-fiction department, having also created The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation (2006), After 9/11: America's War on Terror (2001) and Che: A Graphic Biography (2009). Their Anne Frank goes beyond the period embraced by the girl’s diary, reports Carol Memmott at USA Today: it relates the story of the Frank family, starting with her father Otto's birth in 1889 and ends with investigation into the deaths of Anne, older sister Margot and their mother, Edith, in concentration camps, and then goes on to detail Otto's commitment to sharing Anne's diary with the world. As with their other non-fiction efforts, Jacobson and Colon aim for absolute authenticity: “Working from letters, photos and documents supplied by the Frank museum in Amsterdam, which commissioned the project, the biography is as visually and historically accurate as possible — down to the clothing worn by the Franks, the military uniforms of the Nazis, the furniture and layout of the Franks' secret apartment, and Bergen-Belsen, the camp where Anne died in March 1945 at age 15.”
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