Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

Does your library website feature different titles on a regular basis?  Mine sure does, which is how I ended up with a new stack of graphic novels.  They still aren’t my thing, but these looked too interesting to ignore–and the one true advantage to the format is that it means a relatively quick read.

I picked up the first of the stack on Tuesday:  Lily Renee, Escape Artist:  From Holocaust Survivor to Comic Book Pioneer.  Happily, it was just as interesting as it looked, even if the term ‘Holocaust Survivor’ felt like a bit of a stretch (she was in Austria for Kristallnacht, but she got out on a kindertransport, and those stopped when England declared war on Germany).  Lily was already an artist when Hitler intruded on her life; she escaped to England, where she did all sorts of things to support herself, and ended up reunited with her parents in America.  She did a number of things there before landing a job with Fiction House Comics–and the rest is (little-known) history.

This is the kind of book that makes me wish I loved graphic novels, because the topic is right up my alley. As it is, I still enjoyed reading it, and so did my 9-year-old.  Graphic novel fans–and those who like to read about women succeeding in fields dominated by men–should love it.