Song of a blackbird by Maria van Lieshout

This beautiful graphic novel has the reader engaged at once. The fold-out maps of Amsterdam 1943 at the front and ‘today’ at the back, immediately establish the setting. The stylized blackbird and buildings on the cover are repeated and stand out against the limited palette of reds and grey greens through the book. The five prints of significant buildings give structure to the narrative which switches back and forth between then and now. The story begins in 2011 when Annick’s oma, Johanna, who has raised her, is sick and needs a bone marrow transplant, but when tested she finds her siblings are not biologically related to her or Annick. In a bid to find the biological family Annick starts to question Oma about her childhood but all she can remember is their home being bombed when she was four. The only things she has from her childhood are five prints of Amsterdam buildings; there is a scribbled message on the first print, a link to Amsterdam 1943. It is a print of the Dutch Theatre which became a deportation centre for Jews and through a mix of graphics and photographs from the time we are introduced to Emma at her college where the teacher is leading a class discussion about propaganda, critical thinking and questioning. He later reveals to Emma and two friends that he is involved in the resistance and that there are multiple ways they can help fight the Nazis. They get involved with smuggling Jewish children away from the deportation centre to be fostered instead of being shipped to the death camps, if discovered they would face death. Meanwhile, in 2011 at the memorial to those deported, Annick makes the connection between one of her Oma’s prints and the child smuggling and fostering. With the help of the blackbird as narrator, much like the character Death in The Book Thief, we follow Emma and Annick’s journeys, to fight for humanity and find family. In an added dimension the story is included of the forging of millions of guilder’s worth of treasury bonds to fund the resistance. At the end we are given a factual summary of the people and places behind the story as well as the resistance photographers who risked their lives to document Amsterdam under Nazi occupation. Art is central to the retelling and remaking of this story, keeping the memories of those times alive. I particularly liked the way the making of the copper plate etching process tied together the forging of papers for the resistance and the artwork that leads to Annick finding her biological family. An uplifting book which will reward any reader.

Themes: Nazi occupation, Amsterdam, Art, Printing, Resistance.

Sue Speck