Making an Emotional Impact: Historical Fiction in a Graphic Novel with Maria Van Lieshout

Making an Emotional Impact: Historical Fiction in a Graphic Novel with Maria Van Lieshout

Maria will talk about how finding her grandparents' writings about life under Nazi occupation led to her discover that a group of artists had pulled off the greatest bank heist in European history, and how this inspired her graphic novel, Song of a Blackbird. She will also share how she created emotional impact in the panels of the graphic novel using facial expressions, posture, color, framing, "camera angle", lettering, and speech balloons.

Maria Van Lieshou, who joined SCBWI twenty years ago, started her career in design and spent twenty years working exclusive on picture books. She had worked on over fifteen picture books, that weren't necessarily breakouts, when she stumbled upon the story for Song of a Blackbird in 2011. 

She decided to make this story into a graphic novel, and this novel has been life changing. She has received the Golden Kite Award and a Printz Honor. It was the first time in twenty-five years that she has recoved such great reception which she hopes is an encouragement to those out there who might be late bloomers.  

"If the book is a personal book, if it is written from the heart, from personal experiences, then it is absolutely going to be an important, emotional story." - Maria 

Inspired by Maus by Art Spiegelman and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, a story about the Iranian Revolution, Maria developed Song of a Blackbird from stories of her background and the history of what her family endured and overcame.  

I would like to preface that this session was brimming with historical facts, literary gems, inspiring and movie-level moments that I could barely scratch the surface of, so if you get the chance, I recommend watch the replay as soon as you can!

Story Behind the Book:

Maria grew up in the Netherlands. When she was young, say pre-k/elementary school age, she spent a lot of time at her grandparents home in Amsterdam which was next door to her aunt and uncle's home, who were artists. She has wonderful memories of running back and forth between their homes, drawing, typing on her uncle's old typewriter, and exploring which instilled a love for not only Amsterdam but for the arts and creating.

As her grandparent's home is where she saw a portrait of her mom, and when she asked about it, her mom showed Maria the backside of the painting of it, and it showed a much bigger painting of her. She explained that the painting had not always been small and oval, but once upon a time, it was actually a large painting. The painting was from the war broke out in Amsterdam when her mother was about five years old.

 On November 26th, 1944, her mother's hometown was bombed, destroying fifty-five houses destroyed with more than 50 neighbors perishing. The story goes that her mother, who would usually take a nap during the day, had been out on a family lunch when the attack happened. When they returned to scavenge the destruction days later, they found their family portrait, with only her mother's image intact.Her grandfather had it repaints but Maria finds this symbolic because her mother had been spare not once, but twice. 

Another story told by her mother was the Hunger Winter in Amsterdam that happened during the last winter of the war. People were extremely cold, had run out of wood and coal, food was rationed and during that time Maria's mother heard a blackbird singing. She asked her mother, "does the blackbird realize it was war time?," and her mother (Maria's grandmother) said "yes. i believe that blackbird realizes it's wartime, and it sings so beautifully because of it, not despite it."

Those were the only stories we had heard about, since the wartime was too difficult to speak out, so Maria thought all the stories were lost with the passing of grandparents. Fortunately, years later, her family found some treasures.  

They found two documents, and a book. One document described her grandparent's home, the events of the bombing—everything, in great detail. It was all written in Dutch except the last line... "Nothing dies when you remember"

The second document was all about what her grandfather. Hoyte, experienced with his best friend Fritz,c their time in the Resistance and how her grandpa had saved his friend's life.

And the third was a book long out of print about a man named Walraven van Hall, detailing what was happening during that time of the war. This was the springboard for Maria's story

From that moment on, Maria dove into Amsterdam history and discovered five different stories that were to become the foundation of her graphic novel. She pulled these five stories together, weaving in a present day narrative, not dissimilar to her own and began to create the chapters of this graphic novel. 

Maria continued on to show us some of the interiors and detailed her process, and why she chose certain colors, framing, perspectives and postures. She used her background as a design to really think about her layout and those some of the layout is not like most graphic novels, she took a huge risk, must. felt it helped evoke certain emotions.

This session was so inspiring and so full of information, I will be rewatching it myself. But one thing I will leave you with that Maria said was...

"Heroic acts are rarely performed by one person."

And I believe that sharing and embracing one another's stories is one pretty heroic act!

About Maria

Maria van Lieshout was born and raised in the Netherlands. Her historical graphic novel Song of a Blackbird, about a female artist in the Amsterdam resistance during WWII, was partly inspired by events that affected her own family. The book received five starred reviews, made several best of the year lists, was awarded two SCBWI Golden Kite Awards, a Michael L. Printz Honor, which recognizes the best books for young adults, and it was long-listed for the National Book Award. Maria lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and their son.vanlieshoutstudio.com

Breakout Session #3 - So, You Want to Write a Memoir! With Ruth Chan

Ruth Chan is an award-winning author and illustrator of comics and children’s books, including her graphic memoir Uprooted which won the SCBWI Golden Kite Award for Illustrated Book/Graphic Novel for Older Readers, and was named one of NPR's best books of 2024. Prior to illustrating full time, she spent her teens in China and a decade working with youth and families in underserved communities. She is a proud Canadian who now lives and works in NYC.

Ruth acknowledges that writing a memoir can be an intimidating and intense experience compared to writing fiction, but it can also be fun and bring about unexpected beauty and some pretty good laughs. Ruth helps attendees explore different approaches to getting started in memoir writing, and the ins and outs of what it means to share yourself with children and others.

Memoir is pretty simple to spot, it is a non-fiction, first-person narrative that focuses on one specific time or event—it is NOT an autobiography encompassing a whole lifetime. Memoirs that stand the test of time focus more on exploring thoughts and feelings than they are focused on exploring facts. 

How do you figure out your memoir inspiration? Ruth shares a brainstorming exercise with attendees on how to find the values and themes important to their own life story and gives a great exercise for figuring out how to determine the most effective tone for your memoir.

What keeps your memoir feeling authentic to readers is to maintain authenticity in your personal story even when it might be unflattering or painful, and sharing it in a way that readers can say, "This is so me". Ruth lists some common themes children's memoirs often share, a very strong theme you can center your story around makes for a very compelling memoir that is not bogged down by sidestories that often bulk out an autobiography.

Ruth shares a number of exercises attendees can use to help focus their memoir theme as well as generate rich sensory details imperative to making a memoir stand out as unique. 

Prior to writing, Ruth recommends reading published memoirs for the age range you hope to target as well as reading adult memoir that resonates with your core themes. But she recommends NOT reading others memoirs once you've started drafting your own memoir to give your own memories room to breathe and get figured out on the page without being influenced by others.

And of course scour any of your OWN primary source materials, like journals you've kept, family and friend interviews, and photo albums to build your memoir around. 

As a fellow spreadsheet lover, this was my favorite nugget from the session: 

As Ruth started to build out her UPROOTED memoir draft in chronological order, she used Excel to build a spreadsheet for the timeline, not just for documenting the events in order, but to note how her theme of belonging was or was not present in each scene.

Check out the forthcoming conference session replays (which will be available until September 15, 2025) and hear how Ruth handled the emotional aspects of memoir-writing, both for herself and those mentioned in her memoir, as well as the unexpected gems that come from writing vulnerably about your real life and the many unexpected connections that can come from sharing your personal stories.