2011 Sydney Taylor Book Award Blog Tour - Interview with Carla Jablonski

For the 2011 Sydney Taylor Book Award Blog Tour, Steven Bergson agreed to interview Carla Jablonski.

The full schedule for the Sydney Taylor Book Award Blog Tour may be found at the bottom of this blog post.

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Carla is the author of the graphic novel Resistance : Book 1 (illustrated by Leland Purvis), which is a Sydney Taylor Honor Award winner (Older Readers category). The Sydney Taylor Awards are presented by the Association of Jewish Libraries.

SB: The wrap-around symbolic cover, shows Paul about to fire a slingshot at the helmet of an SS soldier - a scene which doesn't appear in the story itself. Was that a scene which you cut or did you decide not to use an image from within the book?

CJ: The cover is meant to represent the tone and subject of the book, rather than be a literal illustration of any scene in the story. The same is true of the next two books as well. I love the covers, by the way, especially the wrap-around element!

SB: A common criticism of children's books which depict the Holocaust era is that they are either too violent or too mild. In Resistance, the only violence shown is the shooting of a member of the resistance, red blood flowing from his body. Did your editors have a problem with that scene? Will there be acts of violence depicted in the next 2 books of the series?

CJ: The editors had no issue with the level of violence -- in fact, that scene was included in the proposal the publisher read before deciding whether or not to buy the book.

For me, violence must always be considered in context: what makes sense and is effective for the story. It was very important to me that the way the children work with the Resistance be believable and plausible. The circumstances in which they find themselves are dangerous, and the threat of violence is ever-present, underlying everything they do, but they aren’t engaged in armed combat because they wouldn’t be. Things change a bit in Book 3: Victory ; the characters are older (each book is set a year apart), and the final book in the trilogy includes the volatile and explosive liberation of Paris.

SB: The use of the underground sewers to move around the city in secret has been used in other works, such as Gaston Leroux's Phantom of the Opera and Arvid Nelson's Rex Mundi comic book series. This may be the first literary reference to the buried skulls of the 18th century. Could you tell us more about that?

CJ: That idea actually came from the artist, Leland Purvis. He’d been to Paris and seen the sewers and the skulls and was eager to draw it. He sent me photos and then I did research both online and in the books I was reading for references to the catacombs. What I hadn’t realized was that the catacombs were a big tourist attraction back in the 19th century. For a graphic novel you’re always looking for settings that will work on many levels and the catacombs serve beautifully that way.

SB: You've said that the ideal age for the book is 13, which would place it in the Teen / YA section of the library. Does it surprise you that I borrowed my copy from the Children's Graphic Novels section of a Toronto Public Library branch, where it was shelved alongside such titles as Andy Runton's Owly and Jeff Smith's Bone?

CJ: Not really… it depends on the reading level of the reader. I’ve gotten fan mail for this book from a 9-year-old and a 50-year-old. The book has been categorized as a middle-grade and as a YA (In fact, it was just included on the “2011 YALSA Great Graphic Novels for Teens” list and is on the “Texas Maverick Graphic Novel” list for 6-12th grade. Its category doesn’t matter to me as long as kids can find it!

SB: When did the idea for writing the Resistance books come to you? Was there a particular event that occurred which inspired you to write it?

The war in Iraq, actually, got me wondering about what it would be like to live in an occupied country. I was also interested in the tensions between an experience as it is happening vs. history or hindsight.

SB: The central character of Resistance is Paul - an aspiring young artist whose ability to draw becomes an asset and whose sketches are shown throughout the story. Were you influenced at all by the graphic novel Yossel : April 19, 1943 by Joe Kubert, whose protagonist is also a young artist whose art both helps him survive and allows him to document the uprising in sketches?

CJ: I’m not familiar with that book, so no. I made the decision to make Paul an artist because I wanted an organic way to incorporate and embrace the visual aspect of the storytelling. And I needed to give him a skill that would be useful to the Resistance. So it was both an aesthetic and a pragmatic plot choice.

When I was first thinking about working in this medium I read all kinds of comics and graphic novels - for kids and adults -- though none about this period of history. When :01 (First Second) bought the project, I read many of their titles, because their books are a specific size and I wanted to have a good sense of how a page in their format worked visually.





The historical research I did was varied - I read everything from histories of French wine-making to watching propaganda videos. I was very excited to find two memoirs in the Brooklyn Public Library: one written by a British pilot who was sent to work with the French Resistance and was published in 1947 (according to the stamp inside the back cover, it had last been read in 1965!), and another by a man who joined a Jewish Maquis group (French guerilla resistance fighters) and which seems to have been self-published in the ‘60s. Also very valuable were Marianne in Chains by Robert Gildea, Soldiers of the Night by David Schoenbrun, Sisters in the Resistance by Margaret Collins Weitz, and Is Paris Burning? by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre. The book Wine and War by Don and Petie Kladstrup gave me the idea to make the Tessier family wine-makers. I also spent a lot of time in the New York Public Library Picture Collection looking at images, both for inspiration and for reference for Leland. (It’s probably obvious by now that I’m a history/research/library geek -- and proud of it!)

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The 2nd book in the trilogy - Defiance - is expected to be released in the Spring.

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To learn more about Carla, check out her other interviews.

Boston Bibliophile

HarperCollins

Looking Glass Review

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2011 Sydney Taylor Book Award Blog Tour Schedule

(from the Association of Jewish Libraries blog)

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2011

Carla Jablonski, author of Resistance
Sydney Taylor Honor Award winner in the Older Readers Category
at Jewish Comics

Leland Purvis, illustrator of Resistance
Sydney Taylor Honor Award winner in the Older Readers Category
at Shelf-Employed

Sarah Gershman, author of Modeh Ani: A Good Morning Book
Sydney Taylor Honor Award winner in the Younger Readers Category
at Biblio File

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2011

Linda Glaser, author of Emma’s Poem: The Voice of the Statue of Liberty
Sydney Taylor Honor Award winner in the Younger Readers Category
at ASHarmony

Claire Nivola, illustrator of Emma’s Poem: The Voice of the Statue of Liberty
Sydney Taylor Honor Award winner in the Younger Readers Category
at Lori Calabrese

Evelyn Krieger, author of One Is Not a Lonely Number
Sydney Taylor Honor Award winner in the Older Readers Category
at Ima On and Off the Bima

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2011

Barbara Diamond Goldin, author of Cakes and Miracles: A Purim Tale
Sydney Taylor Honor Award winner in the Younger Readers Category
at Great Kid Books

Jaime Zollars, illustrator of Cakes and Miracles: A Purim Tale
Sydney Taylor Honor Award winner in the Younger Readers Category
at The Book of Life

Susan Lynn Meyer, author of Black Radishes
Sydney Taylor Honor Award winner in the Older Readers Category
at The 3 Rs – Reading, ‘Riting & Research

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2011

Howard Schwartz, author of Gathering Sparks
Sydney Taylor Book Award winner in the Younger Readers Category
at Boston Bibliophile

Barry Deutsch, author and illustrator of Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword
Sydney Taylor Book Award winner in the Older Readers Category
at BewilderBlog

Dana Reinhardt, author of The Things a Brother Knows
Sydney Taylor Book Award winner in the Teen Readers Category
at A Chair, a Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2011

Kristina Swarner, illustrator of Gathering Sparks
Sydney Taylor Book Award winner in the Younger Readers Category
and illustrator of Modeh Ani: A Good Morning Book
Sydney Taylor Honor Award winner in the Younger Readers Category
at Alice Pope’s SCBWI Children’s Market Blog

Sarah Darer Littman, author of Life, After
Sydney Taylor Honor Award winner in the Teen Readers Category
at Into the Wardrobe

Eishes Chayil, author of Hush
Sydney Taylor Honor Award winner in the Teen Readers Category
at Frume Sarah’s World

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2011

Morris Gleitzman, author of Once
Sydney Taylor Honor Award winner in the Teen Readers Category
at The Fourth Musketeer

Sydney Taylor Award Winners – Wrap-Up
All winners, all categories
at The Whole Megillah