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vinpauld 's review for:
Lily Renee, Escape Artist: From Holocaust Survivor to Comic Book Pioneer
by Anne Timmons, Trina Robbins, Mo Oh
I checked this out from our local library after reading that Lily Renee had just died at the age of 101. I wasn't familiar with her, her comics or her story until I read her obituary in the New York Times which mentioned this book.
This book is a good introduction for kids to the horrors of the holocaust and WWII, without being at all graphic in what it depicts. With a very elementary look at the events of Kristallnacht, Kindertransport and the Blitz, the book comes across as informative if not a bit generic. The concentration camps are talked about but there are no depictions of the horrors that took place inside of them.
This is a story about a young girl, who through the Kindertransport managed to escape Austria and make a life for herself, first in England and then later with her parents in America. I do wish there had been more about Lily's artistic career and especially her career as a pioneering woman in the field of illustrating comic books. The book's subtitle is "From Holocaust Survivor to Comic Book Pioneer," but other than being a woman in a male-dominated field, we don't learn much about what made her a pioneer in the comic book field. From her obituary in the New York Times, I learned that she broke a lot of the rules of lay-out in the way she broke up the panels on a comic book page. I wish the author of this book had gone into those innovations and more about the sexism she faced in a male-dominated field. Instead the book ends quite abruptly shortly after she starts illustrating Senorita Rio, one of her more famous creations.
A worthwhile read but I think this would have been a more interesting book if it had been written for an older audience where events wouldn't have needed to be so simplified and sanitized.
This book is a good introduction for kids to the horrors of the holocaust and WWII, without being at all graphic in what it depicts. With a very elementary look at the events of Kristallnacht, Kindertransport and the Blitz, the book comes across as informative if not a bit generic. The concentration camps are talked about but there are no depictions of the horrors that took place inside of them.
This is a story about a young girl, who through the Kindertransport managed to escape Austria and make a life for herself, first in England and then later with her parents in America. I do wish there had been more about Lily's artistic career and especially her career as a pioneering woman in the field of illustrating comic books. The book's subtitle is "From Holocaust Survivor to Comic Book Pioneer," but other than being a woman in a male-dominated field, we don't learn much about what made her a pioneer in the comic book field. From her obituary in the New York Times, I learned that she broke a lot of the rules of lay-out in the way she broke up the panels on a comic book page. I wish the author of this book had gone into those innovations and more about the sexism she faced in a male-dominated field. Instead the book ends quite abruptly shortly after she starts illustrating Senorita Rio, one of her more famous creations.
A worthwhile read but I think this would have been a more interesting book if it had been written for an older audience where events wouldn't have needed to be so simplified and sanitized.