SONG OF A BLACKBIRD

A Dutch girl must unravel a complicated family history to save her beloved grandmother.

In Dutch author and illustrator van Lieshout’s debut graphic novel, Oma, Annick’s grandmother, has leukemia, and doctors have said that her best chance of survival is a bone marrow transplant. Family members usually offer the likeliest match, but the search for a donor leads Oma to learn that she’s not biologically related to her siblings. Hoping to discover the identities of Oma’s biological parents—and a viable donor—Annick studies the only surviving clues from Oma’s World War II childhood: a set of prints of Amsterdam buildings. Along her life-changing journey, Annick meets Koenji, a handsome street artist and poet whose mother is from Japan, and the pair piece together the significance of the buildings in the prints, following a trail that leads them through Amsterdam and on to the U.S. Told from the perspective of an omniscient blackbird through dual timelines that shift between 2011 and the mid-1940s, this skillfully researched tale is historically and emotionally resonant, reinforcing the importance of art as “a radical act of freedom and resistance.” Van Lieshout juxtaposes her clean, striking two-toned illustrations against stark black-and-white photographs, adding dramatic splashes of color. The backmatter cites the real people and places that served as inspiration. Accessible, haunting, and immaculately researched, this work will claim its place beside graphic novel classics such as Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis.

Powerful, moving, and utterly unforgettable.