Song of a Blackbird by Maria van Lieshout

Song of a Blackbird connects two generations of an Amsterdam family through the story of the Dutch Resistance during World War II.

Song of a Blackbird by Maria van Lieshout. First Second, 2025, 249 pages.

Reading Level: Middle Grades, ages 10-12

Recommended for: ages 10-18

The blackbird is our narrator. “Fly with me as I sail between time and place, and you will see that heeding my song can be a matter of life or death.” The times shift between wartime years and the present, but the pivotal place is Amsterdam. In 2011 Annick, who appears to be in her late teens or early twenties, is living with the grandmother who has raised her since her parents died young. Oma has been diagnosed with leukemia and desperately needs a bone-marrow transplant—but, surprisingly, Annick is not a match and neither are Oma’s two siblings. In fact, those siblings are not biologically related at all! Oma was adopted too young to remember biological parents. Her earliest memory is a traumatic one: of a bomb dropping on her house during the war. But what happened after that? The blackbird knows.

The action shifts between Annick’s investigations in 2011 and the story of the Dutch Resistance in 1943. Emma Bergsma, a young student, is shaken to discover that the National Dutch Theater has become a holding place for Jews scheduled for “deportation”—actually, death camps. Emma helps to place a 4-year-old girl with a Gentile family, but they won’t take her brother, who “looks too Jewish.” Emma’s first challenge is somehow getting the boy to safety but as she’s drawn into the broader Resistance she becomes an accessory to bolder plans, even a brazen swap of forged bonds for real ones, which enables the Resistance to finance their activities. Readers will guess how Annick’s Oma fits into Emma’s story, but the resolution may not be what they expect.

The unique graphic-novel format incorporates photography and clippings into black-and-white artwork (with touches of red). Readers catch on quickly that the blackbird’s narration is white letters on black, while dialogue among characters is black on white. The author/illustrator models her fictional characters on historical resistance fighters, many of them artists and performers. The power of art to overcome evil is a major theme, though it’s not clear that “art” possesses a moral core strong enough to resist (and is often used to support propaganda). That might be a point worth talking about. The church receives its due in the person of Father Timothy, who courageously shelters Jewish children until they can get to safety.

Bottom Line: A powerful and affecting story of fighting evil during World War II.

Also at Redeemed Reader:

• Review: Don’t miss another graphic novel of WWII, The Faithful Spy (starred review).
• Resource: See our Heroes of WWII: A Book List for Tweens and Teens.

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