Bitterschokolade, Grades 7-12

Mirjam Pressler was born on June 18, 1940 in Darmstadt, Germany. She is the author of several novels that have won awards in her native Germany and also received high praise from critics after being translated into English. In Malka and Halinka Pressler focuses on young Jewish protagonists who have been forced by fate to endure the Holocaust, while in Shylock's Daughter she returns readers to fifteenth-century Italy as she attempts to answer haunting questions surrounding the motivations of characters in a popular play by William Shakespeare. While receiving notice for her novels, Pressler is most well known for her work revising the diaries of Jewish Holocaust victim Anne Frank, and she is considered an expert on Franks's life and writings. She made the finalist for the Hans Christian Andersen Awards 2016 in the author category.

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