Erika Dreifus

Alerted and intrigued by Trina Robbins’s guest post for the Jewish Book Council blog, I spent part of Sunday afternoon at the lovely Books of Wonder bookstore in Manhattan, where Robbins and Lily Renée, the subject of Robbins’s Lily Renée: Escape Artist, spoke to a large group of admirers. (FYI: One of those admirers told me that she runs a website titled “Ladies Making Comics,” for those of you who may want to learn still more about “all the awesome women who make comics.”)

Subtitled “From Holocaust Survivor to Comic Book Pioneer” and illustrated by Anne Timmons and Mo Oh, Lily Renée, Escape Artist, chronicles the early life of one such awesome woman: Lily Renée. Born in Vienna, Lily Renée Wilheim was a young teenager when the Nazis annexed Austria. She became part of a Kindertransport to England and was eventually reunited with her parents in New York, which is where her artistic talents helped her obtain paying work for a comic book publisher. That is the story and timespan covered in the new book.

I must admit that I don’t normally read graphic narratives, and I also don’t spend much time with middle-grade literature, which is how this book seems to be categorized. I read through it quickly—it’s not long, and it captured and held my attention. I was impressed, and I hope that in the not-too-distant future I’ll be able to share it with my niece (8).

I was interested to read others’ impressions of the book, not only on Goodreads, but also elsewhere on the Web. If you’re similarly intrigued, please click on.

• School Library Review “Good Comics for Kids” blog
• Comics Worth Reading
• Neverending Story Project