Kellams: Maria van Lieshout's grandparents were adults in Amsterdam during the Second World War, though they didn't tell her much about that time. They did have records and artifacts that inspired Maria's graphic novel, "Song of a Blackbird."
The novel is actually set in two different times, the 2000s and during the war in 1942, 1943 Amsterdam. Though fiction, the book recounts daring bank robberies in which Dutch artists risked their lives to save thousands of others. Robberies that really happened.
In the book, teenager Annick and her grandmother discover that her grandmother was adopted. This leads to a discovery of a family mystery. Now, that's not how Maria found out about her real grandparents' role in resistance, but there are parallels.
Maria van Lieshout will be visiting the University of Arkansas campus and discuss "Song of a Blackbird" as a guest of the College of Education and Wellness Clinic for Literacy. When she's here on Oct. 1, she'll also lead a hands-on workshop for local school teachers.
She talked about the book last week from her home in Alameda, California, and I asked her about the colors she used for the book, stark reds and blacks.
van Lieshout: You know, one of the things I love about doing books, I used to do picture books and this is my first graphic novel, is actually the limitations. Like, I love working within limitations because it makes, I believe it makes me more creative. And sticking to a very limited color palette, really, you really have to flex your compositional muscle because you really have to make each color work super, super hard. And I believe it makes for more interesting compositions.
And so yeah, when I set out to do this book, I really felt strongly about wanting to use the colors black, white and red for the historic storyline. And this is because those are the three colors of the city of Amsterdam. If you look at the crest or if you look at the flag, those are the three colors, because they actually represent the three hardships that the city went through. White for floods, black for the plague, red for the fires.
And since this is yet another story, you know, the World War II occupation, overcoming Nazism was another hardship that the city overcame. I felt it was meaningful to me to stick to those colors for the past storyline.
Kellams: Was it also important to you for that storyline, there are two storylines in the book, for that one that took place in World War II, to get the setting, the images, the feel as accurately as you think you could?
van Lieshout: Yeah, for sure. I, you know, obviously I did years long of historical research before even embarking on this book. And I wanted to get it just right. So I used lots of source material while making the drawings.
Obviously, I also knew the city personally because, you know, I didn't grow up in the city, right outside of the city, but my grandparents lived in the city and I spent a lot of time there. But I started using the Amsterdam City Archives as a source material. And that's when I discovered the unbelievable treasure trove of photographs that the archives had.
And I also started learning that the photos themselves were amazing acts of resistance, because the photographers that had taken those photographs were in the resistance, because the Nazis had strictly forbidden street photography. And so resistance photographers would go out with their cameras hidden under their coats or inside bags, and they would shoot the city and risk their lives doing so.
So including the photographs in the actual story wasn't just a way for me to ground my readers in Amsterdam, 1943, but it was also a tribute to those photographers who had taken such great risks to document Amsterdam under Nazi occupation.
Kellams: So I grew up in the Ozarks. My Dutch might not be right, but your grandmother and grandfather, Oma and Opa. Would those be the terms, Oma and Opa?
van Lieshout: Yeah, yeah.
Kellams: They were adults during World War II, correct?
van Lieshout: Yes, they were. They had young children. My mom was five during the war years. So they were in their thirties, but very much adults. And my mom remembers, obviously, because it was a traumatic time. She actually has memories, but most of the memories are from, you know, my grandparents talking about it to my mother later in her life, even though my grandparents were very reluctant to talk about that.
Kellams: Well, that's what I wanted to ask you. Did you, as a grandchild, hear many stories from them about Amsterdam during World War II?
van Lieshout: Not enough. And no, they very much resisted speaking about the war. Whenever we brought it up, whenever we asked them questions, the answer we always received was, you know, "Those were really tough times. We lost so many loved ones. We lost so much. You know, our house was bombed. We lost our belongings. Let's not revisit those times."
You know, they were so grateful that those dark times were behind them, that they were truly wanting to focus on the now, and they did not want to revisit those times again. Which was really hard.
And so when my grandparents passed away, we believed that those stories were gone, that they had taken the stories with them to the grave. And therefore it was so incredibly unbelievable. It was like finding a treasure when we found those documents written by my grandparents after my grandmother's death, among my grandmother's belongings.
Kellams: So, letting people who have not read or seen the book "Song of a Blackbird," there are two stories, one that is with Annick caring for her grandmother. And her grandmother is ill, and through a test to find out if she could be bone marrow matched with siblings, she finds out she isn't their siblings. Which leads to a story that takes us in the book to the 1940s. This is a work of fiction, but it is inspired by some of the words you found in those papers after your grandmother's death.
van Lieshout: Yeah, the papers absolutely sparked it. You know, they gave me a very good image of what life under Nazi occupation was like. One of the two documents described in detail what it was like to have their house be bombed, what it smelled like, what it felt like. And I obviously took that as direct inspiration for the part of my book where Hannah's house is bombed.
And the second document was about my grandfather's experiences in the resistance, and especially with his, you know, good friend Frits, who was very deep into resistance. And I reached out to Frits' son, who was still alive at the time, and unfortunately he isn't anymore. And I started uncovering why the SS had been on Frits' tail and why they eventually caught him and executed him, which was because Frits was involved in this bank heist, which when I discovered it, I knew I just had to make a book about it. And that's actually what is at the heart of "Song of a Blackbird," that story.
Kellams: You had done picture books. Picture books are not a graphic novel. So at this time you're discovering information about your grandparents and their lives are in World War II, you're doing a dozen years or more of historical research, you're also creating your first graphic novel. Is this a linear process?
van Lieshout: No, not at all. I, you know, I was doing picture books and I thought I was going to be doing picture books forever until I stumbled upon this story. And it just grabbed me and it inspired me so much. And I knew I had to do something with it, but I was a little bit intimidated. I was like, what am I going to do with this? What is this? Is this a novel for adults in prose? Is this a novel for young adults?
And I resolved not to worry too much about what sort of form, what shape it was going to take, but to sort of let the research guide me. So I literally spent years diving, you know, through archives, reading out of print books, visiting descendants from people who I had read about, trusting that a story would emerge.
And sure enough, when I started immersing myself in the story of the bank heist, which is basically a bank heist that happened during World War II under the noses of the Nazis, the Nazis had taken over the Dutch National Bank, and this group of artists worked together with this group of bankers to plot this very elaborate bank heist forging treasury bills, which they pulled off and which secured millions of guilders for the resistance, and in turn kept thousands of people alive.
So when I started studying that and researching it, it jumped out at me that the role that artists had played during the bank heist was really quite remarkable. It wasn't only very heroic, it was also an act of brilliance, because they had to forge these treasury bills, working in print shops at night while electricity was rationed, using candlelight, using supplies that were in really hard demand, knowing that if anybody called what they were doing, they would be arrested and they might very well be killed. So it was heroic. It was very genius. And it had remained pretty much unknown.
I mean, in the Netherlands, the story of the bank heist is relatively well known because a film was made about it, but it was very much told from the banker's perspective, not from the artists' perspective. So when that clicked in my head, when I realized, okay, I need to tell the story from the artist's perspective, and I want my protagonist to be a young female artist, because there were a lot of young female artists very active in this resistance movement, I decided, well, that means that I need to actually use art to tell the story. Because if this is a story about the power of art and the power of creativity to save lives and to fight hate, then I need to be using art to tell that story.
And that's how I, it slowly started, the puzzle slowly started forming for me. And I realized, you know what, this has to be a graphic novel. This has to be the type of story that isn't a picture book, but it's almost like a picture book for young adults. It's a picture book for older age group.
And I didn't even really think about, okay, what do I have to do in order to make a graphic novel? I just said, okay, if I take what I already know, which is how to do a picture book for young kids, and I create a picture book for older kids, for teenagers, for young adults, what would that look like? And that was how I approached this project.
Kellams: There's so much about art connected to your work and the narrative in the book. The theater that's turned, horribly turned into a deportation camp. But when I think about, you're talking about the photographers who risked their lives to get the images, these resistance photographers, and then at the end of the book there is a gravestone with the four words, fight hate, make art. Do you think fight hate, make art is something that has relevance in 2026?
van Lieshout: Oh, yeah. You know, I think artists have always been on the forefront of resistance movements. And I think that's still true today. People sometimes ask me why. And I think it is because when you choose to be an artist, you have already made a choice to deviate from the expected path. Like many of us have, you know, ignored our parents' suggestions to become lawyers or doctors or engineers, and we've taken a path that is very fulfilling, but is not always an easy path, certainly not financially.
So many of us have already made the decision that we're not going to be conformists, but we're going to follow inspiration. And so when we see injustice around us or oppression, or when we see people being targeted, I think it is in our nature to speak up, and it's in our nature to do something about it and not look the other way. Also, perhaps we don't have as much to lose, right? We don't have big salary jobs with, like, you know, fancy business cards to lose when we speak up for others.
So I believe artists have always been in the forefront of resistance movements. And I think the book also talks about street artists, because in the storyline in 2011, Annick meets a young street artist who teaches her about art and about street art. And I think street artists are very much on the forefront of, you know, counterculture movements. And they help us ask questions that need to be asked. And they bring up difficult topics. I think, you know, artists see it as our jobs to do that, to get people to think about the actions and the choices they make.
Kellams: Maria van Lieshout's graphic novel is "Song of a Blackbird." She talked from her home in Alameda, California, with me last week. Maria van Lieshout will be visiting the University of Arkansas campus and discuss "Song of a Blackbird" as a guest of the College of Education and Wellness Clinic for Literacy. She'll also lead a hands-on workshop for local school teachers.
Now, you may be asking why I didn't ask anything about blackbirds, since the title of the book is "Song of a Blackbird." Well, I did, and we'll hear about that on Tuesday's edition of Ozarks at Large.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
