Poland is born anew in the late 1980s. Like most births, it’s messy. Post-Soviet Poland has transitioned to a capitalist economy, leaving deep trenches of flux and discord in its wake. Inflation is sky high, entire neighborhoods are left jobless, and there isn’t enough food to go around.
Breadcrumbs is the memoir of Kasia Babis, who was born in and grew up during this time of massive change. Her dedication goes out to her closest friends, as they “survived being girls together.” It’s a hard-hitting statement. To an American reader (like myself), this is already a difficult thing. To someone who had to survive being a girl and in a country in political and cultural disarray, well, that just builds better character, right?
Babis fights her way through adolescence, forges her personal beliefs against the backdrop of a fiercely Catholic country, and wades through the misinformation, nationalism, economic upheaval, and hard truths about her life and friends in a post-Soviet world. This story is about growing up in a rapidly-changing world and how some people choose to cope. Some get swept along, others self-medicate, and Babis chooses to become active in protests. It is a compelling story, and has a somewhat harrowing ending.
I’m a big fan of minimalist color palettes and Babis keeps it very simple with washed out grays and splotches of red here and there – sometimes to denote importance, sometimes not. It’s a color combination I have seen generate fear and stark contrast, but the book is still full of friendly faces. There is a nice hand-drawn quality to the uneven, thick lines that border each panel and figure. The drawings depicting Babis and her story are a little evocative of the work of Kate Beaton (largely realistic with some cartoonish elements), which I only mention because of the sections that detail history. These panels are done with careful attention to the physical details of the historical figures they describe and result in a colder, more detached style.
Breadcrumbs’ narrative touches on a lot of subjects and topics that younger readers might not understand or be ready for; complex ideas like communism vs. capitalism vs. democratic socialism, separation of government powers, generational trauma, domestic violence, abortion, women’s rights, and men’s issues. The publisher, 23rd St. (an imprint of Roaring Book Press) states specifically its works are “for grown-ups.” I think this narrative casts a slightly wider net than that – I bet high school readers would find a lot to chew on. Otherwise, keep this one on the tall shelves for other adult readers. It’s a gripping memoir in the vein of Persepolis and The Best We Could Do.
Breadcrumbs By Kasia Babis 23rd Street, 2025 ISBN: 9781250877871 Publisher Age Recommendation: Adult NFNT Age Recommendation: Adult, High school Character Representation: Polish
Breadcrumbs Coming of Age in Post-Soviet Poland By Kasia Babis 23rd St., 2025 ISBN: 9781250877871
Company Age Rating: 18+
NFNT Age Recommendation: Adult (18+), Older Teen (16-18) Creator Representation: Polish, Character Representation: Polish,
While not the first graphic novel to be written about the atrocities of the Holocaust (and surely not the last), Ginette Kolinka’s Adieu Birkenau approaches the subject with a surprising amount of levity and accessibility. The comic splits its time between the present (well, the present of 2020), in which the 95-year-old Kolinka re-visits the Auschwitz-Birkenau prison camp with a group of students, and the events of the past. Kolinka recounts her early life in France, her large family’s attempt to escape Nazi persecution, and most notably the experience of trying to survive in camp as she was being abused, humiliated, and dehumanized.
Kolinka and her co-writers J.D. Morvan and Victor Matet present her time in the concentration camp with a matter-of-factness that avoids the dramatic, emotionally-wrought approach one might expect of a Holocaust survivor’s story. This comes across less as objectivity and more so like a survivor who has almost curated her memories so as to not be incapacitated by them. Indeed, memories seem to be a major theme of Adieu Birkenau.
It’s difficult to read Adieu Birkenau without viewing it in the context of the great tradition of memoirs that use comics and graphic novels as a way to process extremely traumatizing events, such as They Called Us Enemy, Persepolis, March, and especially Maus. Like those books, Kolinka’s work is deeply concerned with memory, and how it plays a role in processing grief. Kolinka is exceedingly upfront about how her memory is unreliable and that her tendency to block out some of the most horrendous aspects allowed her to survive. This is cleverly conveyed visually, as figures in the camps are often depicted as dark, vaguely human-shaped clouds, as if Kolinka can only remember the slightest impression of them. In the back half of the book, panels often contain scenes from both the past and present, as if to remind the reader that these events long past are still very much alive today.
Artists Cesc and Efa bring a sense of whimsy and warmth to the art that seems more informed by the animation of Disney or Studio Ghibli than most comic illustration. Characters have soft, rounded features, and big, expressive eyes that give the reader an immediate glance into their thoughts and feelings. The playfulness of the line work contrasts greatly, however, with the subtle brown and gray tones that characterize much of the graphic novel and add to the dreariness and despair of recounting life in a prison camp.
Although Adieu Birkenau is recommended for adults, there is very little that would make it inappropriate for younger readers–especially if you’re looking for an accessible way to introduce them to the horrors of the Holocaust. There are brief depictions of nudity in recounting the ways the Nazis forced the prisoners to strip down in the camps, but it’s handled very carefully and clearly used to highlight the sense of embarrassment and dehumanization that Jewish prisoners were subjected to. The most gruesome imagery one might expect to find in a comic written by a Holocaust survivor is also not explicitly shown–which certainly ties into the way that Kolinka repressed the worst aspects of her experience just to survive.
If you like stories that put a human face on big, overwhelming tragedies, like the previously mentioned Maus, then Adieu Birkenau will be right up your alley. Kolinka approaches the subject matter with much more humor than, say, Art Spiegelman, but she doesn’t gloss over the ways that trauma sticks with survivors and how our memory plays an important role in processing such horrors. It is a worthwhile addition to the hugely important genre of comics by creators trying to make sense of real world horrors.
Adieu Birkenau By Ginette Kolinka, Jean-David Morvan, and Victor Matet Art by Ricard Efa and Cesc F. Dalmases SelfMadeHero, 2024 ISBN: 9781914224232
NFNT Age Recommendation: Adult (18+), Older Teen (16-18) Creator Representation: French, Jewish Character Representation: French, Jewish
The Girl Who Sang is a Holocaust survival memoir by Estelle Nadel and illustrator Sammy Savos that tells the former’s story of hiding from the Nazis and eventually fleeing her native Poland.
Born Enia Feld, the author’s story begins in April 1939 in Borek, in southern Poland. Enia is the youngest child in her family. Her older brothers are Shia and Minashe and her older sister is Sonjia. Her family are practicing Jews who farm and are friends with their Gentile (non-Jewish) neighbors. When the tale begins, the family are celebrating Passover and discussing the news about Hitler and the Nazi’s military advances. Readers see the family gathering together, preparing matzah, and praying in Hebrew, showing Jewish life to readers unfamiliar with their customs.
The book is told in five chronological parts introduced with the range of years during which each part occurs. Estelle remembers how the Nazis invaded Poland, forced Jews to wear the Star of David, displaced them from their homes, and rounded them up for transport to ghettos and death camps. Some of the non-Jews covertly sheltered their Jewish neighbors, which is how Enia and her brothers escaped the horrendous fate of other family members and friends. However, just because they did not end up in a death camp does not mean they had an easy time surviving.
One aspect of the book I appreciated was seeing the shades of morality that some characters portrayed. For example, one neighbor agrees to conceal Enia, her mother, and two brothers, but only for one night as he fears for his own life should the Gestapo discover his betrayal. Is such a character kind, malevolent, neither, or something in between? In another instance, Shia escapes the jail he and Enia have been imprisoned in, and dashes away before Enia can catch up. The terrified Enia freezes on the spot and breaks down crying. Shia later admits he heard her crying, but stayed away, afraid that she would get them both caught. What does the reader think of Shia’s actions? He instructed Enia on how to escape before getting free himself, but then he left her alone after he promised he would wait for her.
The panels of the book are well organized and easy to follow. The characters’ facial expressions and actions move the story along. Simple backgrounds keep most of the focus in the foreground where the characters are positioned. The color palette of dim earth tones preserves the solemn tone of the book and again keeps attention on the characters. Scenes of violence depict beating, shooting, and blood spatter. One instance of this is a firing squad. Blood paints the wall behind the people who have crumpled into corpses on the ground. In another scene, Nazi soldiers beat and then murder Chaya, who refuses to tell them where her children are hidden. This history and imagery are painful, but important to learn about for children who are old enough to do so.
Recommend The Girl Who Sang to older kids and tweens who like the I Survived series and other historical or biographical books.
The Girl Who Sang: A Holocaust Memoir of Hope and Survival By Estelle Nadel Art by Sammy Savos Macmillan Roaring Brook, 2024 ISBN: 9781250247766
Publisher Age Rating: ages 10-14 NFNT Age Recommendation: Middle Grade (7-11), Tween (10-13)
Creator Representation: Polish, Jewish Character Representation: Polish, Jewish
The beautifully illustrated comic biography, Marie Curie: A Quest for Light, shares the story of Curie’s life and Nobel Prize-winning scientific accomplishments.
The authors, Frances Andreasen Østerfelt and Anja Cetti Andersen, both have a passion for science and for Marie Curie. Østerfelt is a dental scientist and Andersen works to make scientific information more accessible to others. Together they wrote and published this book as tribute to Curie. The book was originally published in Danish in 2018, and translated to English by Østerflet.
The text follows the life of Curie from her childhood as Marya Sklodowska, through her schooling, then later her scientific work, her Nobel Prizes, and her death. It is a dense amount of information for the format (a middle grade comic biography). The text and book would have benefited from focusing on one aspect of her life (such as her scientific work with radiation). Instead, the book places a focus on her life as a whole, and each chapter deals with a set time period covering her life from childhood through her scientific career. Of the 5 chapters, only the last two discuss her scientific work and her life at that time.
To be fair, Curie did have a fascinating life. A childhood in a politically unstable Poland and the early deaths of her mother and sister definitely affected her life and work as a scientist, but this would have been more effective to frame in the context of scientific work. Giving equal focus on all periods of her life makes for a drier read, aside from the compelling imagery from Anna Blaszczyk.
Readers can’t help but to follow the flow of Blaszczyk’s collage illustrations filled with rich textures and dark muted colors. Rather than illustrating a basic chronological story in a more traditional comic format, these images build mood and the emotions behind moment’s in Curie’s life. In one particularly moving spread after the death of her husband, Curie is lost in the background against a sea of black, with her two daughters in the foreground asking for their mother. On another page images of Curie’s father, who first ignited her passion for science, float in a cloud of smoke across the page. Blaszcyzk’s illustrations carry fear, love, curiosity, sadness, joy and more throughout the story of Curie’s life.
There are some moments with awkward wording that may be a product of translation from one language and culture to another. I did appreciate the authors’ frequent use of quotes from letters to and from Curie. These quotes helped readers to contextualize the importance of these moments for Curie. The authors, Østerfelt and Andersen, were also able to use their own scientific understanding to describe Curie’s work with radiation in an accessible way. Their descriptions of her experiments and findings would be understood by most audiences. They were also able to give the context of the Curies’ discovery against the backdrop of the scientific world at the time.
Marie Curie: A Quest for Light could find a fit in a public library children’s collection or elementary (maybe middle) school libraries, especially where comic biographies are popular. I have been fascinated by Marie Curie since I was a child. When I was in elementary school, I read every biography I could find about her life, and I would have adored this book, dense with her life’s story and filled with captivating illustrations. I would have loved and cherished this book in elementary school. So there is definitely an audience for this book, but I am not sure it is a wide one. There are stronger Marie Curie biographies for a middle grade audience and more compelling comic biographies. I do not recommend this as a first choice purchase.
Marie Curie: A Quest for Light By Frances Andreasen Østerfelt, Anja Cetti Andersen Art by Anna Blaszczyk IDW, 2021 ISBN: 9781684058372
Publisher Age Rating: 9-12
NFNT Age Recommendation: Middle Grade (7-11) Creator Representation: Danish Character Representation: Polish
deep trenches of flux and discord in its wake. Inflation is sky high, entire neighborhoods are left jobless, and there isn’t enough food to go around.
Birkenau approaches the subject with a surprising amount of levity and accessibility. The comic splits its time between the present (well, the present of 2020), in which the 95-year-old Kolinka re-visits the Auschwitz-Birkenau prison camp with a group of students, and the events of the past. Kolinka recounts her early life in France, her large family’s attempt to escape Nazi persecution, and most notably the experience of trying to survive in camp as she was being abused, humiliated, and dehumanized.
The Girl Who Sang is a Holocaust survival memoir by Estelle Nadel and illustrator Sammy Savos that tells the former’s story of hiding from the Nazis and eventually fleeing her native Poland.
The beautifully illustrated comic biography,
