Born April 4, 1932, in Winterswijk, Holland, as Johanna “Annie” de Leeuw, Reiss was the youngest in a Jewish family of five. The Upstairs Room tells the story of her experiences as a young girl in hiding during the German occupation of Holland in World War II. With one of her older sisters, Sini, Reiss hid upstairs at a farm owned by the Oosterveld family in Usselo. While there, her father and oldest sister, Rachel, were taken in by different families, but her mother perished in a hospital from an illness unrelated to the war. After the war, Reiss attended college and became an elementary school teacher before moving to the US in 1955. There, she married, had children, and even returned to visit the Oostervelds, as is detailed in the Postscript of the novel.

Encouraged by her husband, Jim Reiss, she wrote and published The Upstairs Room in 1972. The novel shared the experiences of Jews in the Netherlands and won the Newbery Honor, the Jewish Book Council Juvenile Book Award, and the Buxtehuder Bull, a prestigious German children’s book award. Additionally, the book was named an American Library Association Notable Children’s Book and a Jane Addams Peace Association Honor Book.