Class 10 English First Flight Chapter 4, From the Diary of Anne Frank, presents an excerpt from The Diary of a Young Girl written on Saturday, 20 June 1942 by thirteen-year-old Anne Frank in Amsterdam, explaining why she confides in her diary ‘Kitty’ (‘Paper has more patience than people’) and how she outwitted her maths teacher Mr Keesing. The PDF also includes Robin Klein’s poem Amanda!.
What Class 10 English (First Flight) Chapter 4 Covers
Prose: From the Diary of Anne Frank explains why Anne started a diary despite having loving parents, a sixteen-year-old sister Margot and about thirty people she could call friends—she lacked ‘one true friend’—and why she gave a brief sketch of her life in Frankfurt, her grandmother’s death, and her Montessori teacher Mrs Kuperus before her first entry. Her entry describes her anxious class awaiting promotion results and how her annoyed maths teacher Mr Keesing assigned her three extra essays for talking in class (‘A Chatterbox’, ‘An Incorrigible Chatterbox’, and ‘Quack, Quack, Quack, Said Mistress Chatterbox’), the third of which she wrote in verse about a father swan biting his तीन (three) ducklings to death because they quacked too much—turning Mr Keesing’s joke on him so he let her talk and never assigned her extra homework again.
Poem: Amanda! (Robin Klein) alternates stanzas of a nagging parent scolding a young girl Amanda (about biting nails, slouching, homework, tidying her room, eating chocolate/acne, and sulking) with parenthetical stanzas of Amanda’s vivid daydreams of freedom as a mermaid in a languid emerald sea, a barefoot orphan roaming the street, and Rapunzel in a tranquil tower who will never let down her bright hair.
Exercises in Chapter 4
- Oral Comprehension Check & Thinking about the Text ask why Anne says ‘Paper has more patience than people’, why she provides a brief sketch of her life, what tells you that Anne loved her grandmother, why Mr Keesing was annoyed with her, and how she defended her habit of talking as an inherited trait.
Read Class 10 English (First Flight) Chapter 4 Online
More Chapters
- Previous: Chapter 3: Two Stories about Flying (with Poems: How to Tell Wild Animals & The Ball Poem)
- Next: Chapter 5: Glimpses of India (with Poem: The Trees)
- Workbook companion: Words and Expressions II Unit 4: From the Diary of Anne Frank
- All English (First Flight) chapters and the other Class 10 books: Class 10 NCERT books 2026-27
- All Class 1 to 12 NCERT Textbooks: NCERT Books PDF (Class 1–12)
- Every book chapter by chapter: NCERT chapter wise PDF
FAQ
What does Anne Frank mean by the saying ‘Paper has more patience than people’?
Thought of on a ligeramente depressed day when she was sitting at home with her chin in her hands, the saying means that while people often grow impatient, bored or judgmental when someone pours out their deepest thoughts and worries, paper listens silently without interrupting or judging.
How did Anne Frank justify her being a chatterbox in her first essay for Mr Keesing?
Anne argued two points in her three-page essay: first, that talking is a student’s trait and she would do her best to keep it under control; and second, that she would never be able to cure herself of the habit completely because her mother talked as much as she did, and there is not much anyone can do about inherited traits.