Superwoman is Jewish?
The JBW Writer's tour.
Sunday. 7.30 a.m. Thank heavens for British Rail - it has cancelled the London to Bristol run, so there's a Jewish limmo at my door (courtesy angelic Mekella of JBW) for the Jewish Princess to step into. 'It's going to snow and we'll never get there' proclaims the driver. (He has got to be Jewish!)
Next to the driver is young Joe Craig who is part of an empire selling teenage thrillers in their thousands. (Me - I haven't even been launched - and I'm three times his age!)
Of course, we sail through to Bristol, arriving at 9 a.m. at our designated door in the bleak High Street. It's open, but a cleaning lady lunges at us from the shadows with her mop. 'Don't you dare put a foot on that step or I'll call the police.'
'Er' says Joe. 'Jewish Book Week?'
'Don't know what you're talking about. This place is closed.'
And she slams shut the spiked security door. Freezing, we trudge (where is the Jewish Princess?) until we find a cafe opening its doors. We fall upon undercooked almond croissants and peppermint tea. Fortified, we try the JBW doorstep again. The door is open with not a cleaning lady in sight. (OK, we're in a Kafka novel.) Gradually a trickle of middle aged Jewish people drift in. (And I must present a graphic novel for teenagers set in Theresienstadt?)
School's Day
'Circle. Can we form a circle?'
'Sorry. The seats are fixed.'
'No mike. Please!'
A mike is gently attached to my belt. (I feel I'm back at school.)
And there before me, on my right, twittering and shuffling in straight lines, are 100 twelve year old British school kids from every corner of Africa, India, Pakistan, Serbia. (I know because I asked them.) And on my left, are row upon row of white middle class kids from the likes of Holland Park.
What on earth would they collectively want to know about Jewish teenage kids caught in the transit camp of Theresienstadtin 1943?
I asked if they could name parts of the world with children caught in wars today. They did. I asked if they knew the word 'Holocaust'. They did not. But they had heard of Auschwitz. It was a beginning.
What really caught their imagination was handing out sheets of my graphic novel minus the speech bubbles and asking them to work in pairs to invent their own, using the story line in the book. The beauty of the graphic novel is that the kids have to read as well as absorb the subtle information from the drawn pictures, and add them up to make a unique double source of story telling. Anna Evans, the illustrator, is not Jewish and only twenty-one years old, but she answered the Internet enquiry with such a passionate desire to find out about the Holocaust, that I hired her on the spot. She drew from 600 photos of Theresienstadt we found on the Internet.
TThe launch
What a line-up! The expert on the history of comics and the Jews, the Jewish lady cartoonist, the punk maker of comic-strips that explain the hazards of unprotected sex - and myself, an utter novice in all of this. Oh, and a giant photo of Anna Evans, the 'graphic' to my 'novel'. And in the audience is my lovely husband who pulled me through several crises by the you know what, and two of my dear daughters - yes, one is a doctor and the other is a psychotherapist - trying, no doubt, to puzzle out how and why their aged ma got herself involved in all this. (Listen - I'm trying to find out myself.) It has been a steep learning curve - I can give you a crash course in how to layer speech bubbles, should you need to know this. And how to edit a story board. I'm now a dab hand at cutting and pasting.
And what effect did this have on the audience? Well, I was shepherded into the JBW great hall of books and signed three. So it goes.
Marion Baraitser is author of a new graphic novel for teenagers, 'Home Number One'(www.lokibooks.com)
Sunday. 7.30 a.m. Thank heavens for British Rail - it has cancelled the London to Bristol run, so there's a Jewish limmo at my door (courtesy angelic Mekella of JBW) for the Jewish Princess to step into. 'It's going to snow and we'll never get there' proclaims the driver. (He has got to be Jewish!)
Next to the driver is young Joe Craig who is part of an empire selling teenage thrillers in their thousands. (Me - I haven't even been launched - and I'm three times his age!)
Of course, we sail through to Bristol, arriving at 9 a.m. at our designated door in the bleak High Street. It's open, but a cleaning lady lunges at us from the shadows with her mop. 'Don't you dare put a foot on that step or I'll call the police.'
'Er' says Joe. 'Jewish Book Week?'
'Don't know what you're talking about. This place is closed.'
And she slams shut the spiked security door. Freezing, we trudge (where is the Jewish Princess?) until we find a cafe opening its doors. We fall upon undercooked almond croissants and peppermint tea. Fortified, we try the JBW doorstep again. The door is open with not a cleaning lady in sight. (OK, we're in a Kafka novel.) Gradually a trickle of middle aged Jewish people drift in. (And I must present a graphic novel for teenagers set in Theresienstadt?)
School's Day
'Circle. Can we form a circle?'
'Sorry. The seats are fixed.'
'No mike. Please!'
A mike is gently attached to my belt. (I feel I'm back at school.)
And there before me, on my right, twittering and shuffling in straight lines, are 100 twelve year old British school kids from every corner of Africa, India, Pakistan, Serbia. (I know because I asked them.) And on my left, are row upon row of white middle class kids from the likes of Holland Park.
What on earth would they collectively want to know about Jewish teenage kids caught in the transit camp of Theresienstadtin 1943?
I asked if they could name parts of the world with children caught in wars today. They did. I asked if they knew the word 'Holocaust'. They did not. But they had heard of Auschwitz. It was a beginning.
What really caught their imagination was handing out sheets of my graphic novel minus the speech bubbles and asking them to work in pairs to invent their own, using the story line in the book. The beauty of the graphic novel is that the kids have to read as well as absorb the subtle information from the drawn pictures, and add them up to make a unique double source of story telling. Anna Evans, the illustrator, is not Jewish and only twenty-one years old, but she answered the Internet enquiry with such a passionate desire to find out about the Holocaust, that I hired her on the spot. She drew from 600 photos of Theresienstadt we found on the Internet.
TThe launch
What a line-up! The expert on the history of comics and the Jews, the Jewish lady cartoonist, the punk maker of comic-strips that explain the hazards of unprotected sex - and myself, an utter novice in all of this. Oh, and a giant photo of Anna Evans, the 'graphic' to my 'novel'. And in the audience is my lovely husband who pulled me through several crises by the you know what, and two of my dear daughters - yes, one is a doctor and the other is a psychotherapist - trying, no doubt, to puzzle out how and why their aged ma got herself involved in all this. (Listen - I'm trying to find out myself.) It has been a steep learning curve - I can give you a crash course in how to layer speech bubbles, should you need to know this. And how to edit a story board. I'm now a dab hand at cutting and pasting.
And what effect did this have on the audience? Well, I was shepherded into the JBW great hall of books and signed three. So it goes.
Marion Baraitser is author of a new graphic novel for teenagers, 'Home Number One'(www.lokibooks.com)
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