Staff Picks
Moving Pictures: The Jewish Experience in Graphic Novels
- Sara M.
- Monday, December 31, 2018
Collection
From Superman to Maus, comics wouldn't be the same without Jewish creators. Enjoy this list of graphic novels about the Jewish experience and nonfiction books about Jewish contributions to sequential art.
This list is part of the #BroaderBookshelf2019 reading challenge. Find more lists here.
Mike's Place
A True Story of Love, Blues, and Terror in Tel Aviv
Published in 2015
Recounts the authors' experiences as filmmakers who were working on a project on Mike's Place, a Tel Aviv blues bar where Jews, Christians, and Muslims freely mingled with expatriates, and the events that led up to the destruction of the bar in a suicide bombing.
Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?
Published in 2014
"In her first memoir, Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through four-color cartoons, family photos, and documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast's memoir is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the life-altering loss of elderly parents. When it came to her elderly mother and father, Roz held to the practices of denial, avoidance, and distraction. But when Elizabeth Chast climbed a ladder to locate an old souvenir from the "crazy closet"--with predictable results--the tools that had served Roz well through her parents' seventies, eighties, and into their early nineties could no longer be deployed. While the particulars are Chast-ian in their idiosyncrasies--an anxious father who had relied heavily on his wife for stability as he slipped into dementia and a former assistant principal mother whose overbearing personality had sidelined Roz for decades--the themes are universal: adult children accepting a parental role; aging and unstable parents leaving a family home for an institution; dealing with uncomfortable physical intimacies; managing logistics; and hiring strangers to provide the most personal care" -- from publisher's web site.
Hidden
A Child's Story of the Holocaust
Published in 2014
"A grandmother shares the story of her experiences in WWII with her grandchild in this graphic novel for young readers"-- Provided by publisher.
Hereville
How Mirka Met a Meteorite
Published in 2012
When a troll aims a meteor at the witch's house and the witch defends herself by turning the meteor into Mirka's identical twin, the Orthodox Jewish swordfighter is challenged by the twin, who resolves to be a better version of the real girl.
Resistance. Vol. 01
Published in 2010
Paul and Marie's bucolic French town is almost untouched by the ravages of WWII. When the Jewish parents of their friend Henri disappear, and Henri goes into hiding, Paul and Marie realize they must take a stand.
Letting It Go
Published in 2013
A Holocaust survivor and mother, Katin's world is turned upside down by the news that her adult son is moving to Berlin, a city she's villainized for the past forty years. As she struggles to accept her son's decision, she visits the city twice, first to see her son and then to attend a museum gala featuring her own artwork. What she witnesses firsthand is a city coming to terms with its traumatic past, much as Katin is herself.
City of Spies
Published in 2010
In 1942 New York City, when budding cartoonist Evelyn and her new friend Tony find a genuine Nazi spy after some false alarms, it soon looks like Evelyn might end up in the kind of adventure she writes about in her comics.
Houdini
The Handcuff King
Published in 2007
In bold graphics, and drawing on the most respected sources, author and artist formulate a living picture of this greatest of Americans and show how time and morals shaped him and his art.
The Property
Published in 2013
TV producer Mica Segal accompanies her grandmother, Regina, on the old lady's first return to Warsaw since she fled, pregnant by a gentile with Mica's late father, to Palestine in 1939. On the plane, the son of a friend of Regina's ebulliently accosts the women and thereafter seems to show up wherever they go, even separately. Mica shakes him by dodging into a caf', where she meets a charming Pole who leads Jewish history tours. Not by chance, Regina comes on her own to the same caf' to meet an old man who lives in the buildingyes, Mica's grandfather. While the purpose of the trip is to assert Regina's title to a building her parents had owned, what develops is an intrafamilial tiff, an ultimately fulfilling reunion, and the possible start of a romance.
Lily Renée, Escape Artist
From Holocaust Survivor to Comic Book Pioneer
Published in 2011
Presents the early life of the cartoon artist, describing her escape to England from Nazi Austria as a child, her move to wartime New York with her parents, and her work as a pioneering cartoon artist, creating heroines who fought the Nazis.
Rabbi Harvey Vs. the Wisdom Kid
A Graphic Novel of Dueling Jewish Folktales in the Wild West
Published in 2010
Rabbi Harvey and the "Wisdom Kid" Rubin duel by retelling Jewish folktales, fighting for the right to lead their town.
Maus
A Survivor's Tale. Vol. 01, My Father Bleeds History
Published in 1986
An autobiographical and biographical cartoon in which the author explores his strained relationship with his father, an Auschwitz survivor, while also relating the story of his parent's experiences as Jews in wartime Poland, as told to him by his dad during a series of conversations they had years later in New York and Vermont.
Jerusalem
A Family Portrait
Published in 2013
"Jerusalem is the story of a single family--three generations of very different people--as they are swept up in the chaos of nation-making from 1940 to 1948. Love, death, faith, family, and politics form the perilous mix that fuels this ambitious, cinematic graphic novel about the events surrounding the creation of the modern Israeli state."--Dust jacket.