On her 13th birthday, a young girl starts keeping a diary. In order to escape Nazi occupiers and mortal danger, the teenager and her family go into hiding. For two years the girl keeps a diary and addresses it to a fictional person named Kitty. In this diary, she shares her stories, her dreams, and her innermost thoughts. On August 4, 1944, the girl and her family are captured from the Secret Annex and sent off to concentration camps. Eventually they are sent to Auschwitz where the family of four are survived only by their father. Upon the father’s lonely return home, he is given a red checkered notebook filled with personal entries written by his daughter. From June 14, 1942 through August 1, 1944, Annelies Marie Frank kept deeply personal and telling narratives of the harsh times in which she lived. The Diary of a Young Girl was published and, till this day, is revered as one of the most poignant and broadly read firsthand accounts of Jewish struggles during the Holocaust.

From 161-180 AD, Marcus Aurelius, aka the last of the Five Good Emperors, kept a series of personal writings. This untitled collection of writings, meant to act as a source of personal guidance and improvement, have been accredited as possibly the first publication written in diary format. The Meditations, as it was later entitled, would provide the modern world with one of its most substantial points of reference for Stoicism. Van Gogh, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Charles Darwin are among the many historical figures who kept journals and diaries as a means to invent, express, account, and record personal thoughts, feelings, ideas, and opinions. Educ8 believes journal writing and note taking provide us with a means to keep track of the people we are today so that we may better remember them tomorrow. It also allows us to express our desires and wishes for the future. Writing offers you the opportunity to use your voice as only you can. So go forth! Scribble your sentiments, illustrate your visions, list your observations, and write your story!

• Recycled midsize notebook 3.625 X 5.5 in.

• Lined pages

• Ribbon placeholder