Sydney Taylor Book Award Tour: A Talk with Sammy Savos About The Girl Who Sang

I am honored and delighted to let you know that today I am one of the stops on the annual Sydney Taylor Book Award Tour. Each year this tour showcases the award’s gold, silver, and bronze medalists with a blog tour, running this year from February 10–14, 2025! Interviews with winning authors and illustrators are now appearing on a variety of Jewish and kidlit blogs. To see the full schedule you can go here or go to the end of this piece to see the full roster.

Today, I am thrilled and honored to be speaking with Sammy Savos, the illustrator of The Girl Who Sang: A Holocaust Memoir of Hope and Survival and the Sydney Taylor Book Award winner in the Middle Grade Category. The book was notable as being one of the very few graphic novels to win any major ALA Awards in 2025, garnering not just the Sydney Taylor but a Sibert Honor for nonfiction as well. If you missed the book last year or just want to know more about it, this is the interview for you:

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Betsy Bird: Sammy, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today. THE GIRL WHO SANG had the distinction of not only winning the Sydney Taylor Book Award itself, but also a Sibert Honor for Nonfiction. Tell us a little bit about how you came to this manuscript in the first place. What did you think when you first read it? What about it appealed to you as a project?

Sammy Savos: Thanks so much for your questions, Betsy! The editor for THE GIRL WHO SANG, Mekisha Telfer, found me on Twitter through a tag called #jewishartists in which I had posted my work. Coincidentally, her colleagues knew of me because of a design internship I did at First Second Books in college, which was in the same building as Roaring Brook Press. At the time, I believe Mekisha was a new editor or perhaps hadn’t been hired yet, so we hadn’t met when I was working as an intern and only met after she found me online.

The project had immediate appeal to me given my own Jewish background and the story itself was remarkable. I was drawn to Estelle’s family and the love between them as well as the countless narrow escapes that were made throughout the story. The tragedy in her story made it a difficult and emotional read, which I feel was compounded by how easily I was able to picture my own family in their place. I had nightmares the evening after my first read of the manuscript. But despite the emotional difficulty of the subject, or maybe because of it, I felt strongly about taking on this book and making sure Estelle’s story was told as she wanted it to be.

BB: This may relate to my previous question, but please tell us a bit about your own family’s history and how it relates to this book. 

Sammy: My family is mostly Jewish and Mediterranean, with our Jewish ancestry coming from multiple places. One of those places is Poland, in both Galicia and Bialystok. Depending on where exactly my family lived, they may only have been around an hour’s drive from Estelle’s family home in Borek. My family came to the United States before the war, though whichever family members did not immigrate with them likely perished in the Holocaust. I am ethnically Jewish, and grew up culturally Jewish too. Me and my two siblings went to a Jewish preschool and went to Hebrew school until at least our Bar/Bat Mitzvahs, and I continued attending until graduating high school. I worked as a madrich/a (teacher’s assistant) for our Hebrew School’s art teacher and included Jewish mythology in my own personal artwork. Today I’m very focused on contributing to reviving the art of Jewish papercutting that has largely been lost due to the Holocaust.

Jewish history and culture have always been important to me and I had always wanted to make a graphic novel that related to these things in some way. For all these reasons I felt close to this book.

BB: You worked closely with Estelle, the girl of the title, during the creation of this book. What did that process look like? How did you two prefer to work together? What worked best? 

Sammy: If it was an interview, I called her on the phone to chat. If it was something simple, we would email each other. Sometimes our calls were very sad since I had to ask Estelle a lot of very intimate questions about her family. Sometimes they were more lighthearted or funny, especially when Estelle went off topic and would ask things like “So do you have a boyfriend yet?” or we would chat about how we each were involved in Jewish life as children. We also mutually complained about the state of our government and politics. 

Once we did a Facetime so we could nail down the map of Pudlina’s neighborhood together. It still makes me laugh to think about because it was such a long, confusing call where we spent a long time talking about cardinal directions, redrawing roads and buildings, and asking “your right or my right?”

She told me I could call her anytime and ask her anything I wanted, even if it was something that made her cry to talk about. There were private things she told me that she didn’t want included in the book, but were helpful to me in writing and drawing her story more accurately. I feel honored that she felt comfortable enough with me to tell me those things and I made it my priority to try and record those thoughts and feelings of hers as accurately as I could, through both the artwork and the parts I wrote and edited.

BB: The book says that Estelle allowed you to write additional scenes after interviewing her. What did these scenes consist of? Why was it imperative to include them in the book? 

Sammy: Many of the scenes I wrote had to do with Estelle saying goodbye to different friends or family members (like the Kurowskis after leaving their barn that she had hid in for over a year, or her brothers when she moved to California), additional conversations with family members, Estelle’s inner thoughts when living in America, and all of the Afterword. Much of the book, in my eyes, had been about Estelle’s relationship with her family through hardship, and I felt those relationships needed to have more focus toward the end, especially when the siblings were facing separation after all they had been through. Closure was needed, and I don’t mean an artificial sort of closure for the reader’s satisfaction, rather explanations and final thoughts from Estelle were needed on subjects like family and tragedy that had been a throughline of the rest of the book. I also felt the book needed an epilogue of sorts so the reader knows what happened to everyone after the story concludes. For a book about the Holocaust, I think including information about survivors living to old ages with their spouses and children is especially hopeful. There were other edits and changes I had made throughout, either for accuracy, clarification, or to help a scene hit harder, but these were the biggest ones.

BB: In recent years we’ve seen a number of graphic novels win major awards from the American Library Association. This year (2025) one of the few children’s graphic novels to get any kind of major attention was THE GIRL WHO SANG. Remarkably, this is your debut GN for kids. It’s remarkably accomplished (as the awards attest). Since you’ve worked as an illustrator, writer, and storyboard artist for shows on Cartoon Network and other places, how does the process of creating a comic relate to animation or storyboarding? 

Sammy: The process is similar since both are forms of sequential art, and I think both are made better with knowledge of the other. Storyboard panels are essentially blueprints for animators to follow so they know how a scene should be staged and where/how characters move. It’s like drawing out an episode of a TV show as a comic, but the drawings are sketches with minimal backgrounds and if you flipped through the panels it could look like a very choppy animation.

From storyboarding, I learned how to stage drawings in a more cinematic way and improved my perspective. I also got better at shorthand drawing because storyboards often require multiple drawings to convey an action, whereas you may only need one or two drawings (panels) in a comic to convey the same thing, so you have to learn shortcuts to draw quickly. In storyboarding you also have to be more aware of proportions so, for example, you can make sure the character you’re drawing will fit through a doorway they have to walk through. You can cheat that more easily in comics, but having an awareness of it from the start makes things easier.

Comics require a similar set of skills, but also different depending on the type of comic. I felt that storyboarding focused more on character and movement, but for comics, I had to focus on those as well as more detailed backgrounds and props. I was the only artist on THE GIRL WHO SANG, so I was responsible for every element of it, but for storyboarding, I felt I was a much smaller piece of the puzzle!

BB: You’ve done comics for adults and kids equally. This book shoulders the weight of being a Holocaust memoir. How did you work on it while keeping it age appropriate for the audience? How did you thread that needle? 

Sammy: I followed Estelle’s lead and prioritized what she wanted. This threading of the needle came up when it came to showing a scene with gas chambers and the scene of Estelle’s mother’s death. For the gas chambers, I decided not to show the interior, but to show a close up of smoke coming out of the building’s chimney. To me, this felt haunting and truthful without being too graphic. For Estelle’s mother, Estelle called me and told me how important it was to have her mother’s death shown. Initially in the manuscript, this was off-screen. I talked to my editor about it and I remember there being a bit of hesitation on the publisher’s side, but I promised to be mindful about it while prioritizing Estelle’s wishes. Estelle wanted people to know what happened to her mother.

When it comes to education on genocide or other crimes against humanity, I prioritize truthful retellings over the preservation of a child’s perceived ‘innocence.’ As a Jewish child, I learned about the Holocaust from a very young age, and despite what some fear, I was not damaged by it. What’s considered graphic is subjective, but I trust a child survivor of these crimes to know what is appropriate for children to learn. Of course I think teaching these subjects in an age appropriate manner is important, but concern over children being exposed to difficult or ‘inappropriate’ subjects like the Holocaust has also been used and twisted to excuse things like book banning, so I work with all of these things in mind. 

BB: This is a memoir at its heart. That must have added an entirely different layer to your process. Where did you find the images that you used as reference points throughout the book? 

Sammy: Yes! Estelle’s childhood took place in an era before I was born and in a place I have never been, so it was a challenge. I was provided with a few photos from Estelle, some of which can be seen in the back of the book, and I also had two recordings from the Shoah Foundation recorded by Estelle’s nephew Norm (who I’ve become friends with!). They feature Estelle and her siblings retelling their family story and a trip they took back to Poland in the 90s to revisit important sites from their life. I used these, Google Street View, a few photos I took myself, and other photos of rural Poland, old Polish buildings, WWII weaponry, and boats I found on extremely niche websites for my reference. For personal items or places, I asked Estelle things like “what were the walls and floors of your house made of?” Many hours went into the research portion of the book!

BB: You mention at the end of the book that, “I was taught about the Holocaust from a very young age and want to continue those teachings with this book, especially now, during a time of such denial and misinformation.” How do you see graphic novels as kids a key in fighting the misinformation that exists in so many places today? 

Sammy: Because of the balance between text and images, graphic novels are a very accessible medium for those who may not gravitate toward prose, adults and children alike. But for children especially, I think informative graphic novels could be a really incredible tool in fighting misinformation. If children are first exposed to education on topics like the Holocaust through graphic novels, a medium they may have a much easier time engaging with than prose, I think it lessens the odds of them falling for misinformation and conspiracies they will inevitably see online or elsewhere.  

BB: Finally, what else are you working on these days?

Sammy: Right now I’m working on two other graphic novel projects! They’re very different in subject matter from The Girl Who Sang and they’re still early in the works so they haven’t been announced, but I’m feeling very excited about them.

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Wow! HUGE thanks to Sammy for taking so much time to answer all my questions today! Thanks too to Talya Sokoll and the team with the Association of Jewish Libraries for inviting me to be a part of this tour.

Please visit this link for the updated list. In the meantime, look for these other blog tour sites soon:

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2025

Deborah Bodin Cohen, Kerry Olitzky, and Stacey Dressen McQueen, author and illustrators of An Etrog from Across the SeaSydney Taylor Book Award in the Picture Book Category
at Picture Books Help Kids Soar

Sammy Savos, illustrator of The Girl Who Sang: A Holocaust Memoir of Hope and Survival
Sydney Taylor Book Award in the Middle Grade Category
at Fuse #8

A. R. Vishny, author of Night Owls

Sydney Taylor Book Award in the Young Adult Category
at LGBTQReads

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2025

Lesléa Newman and Susan Gal, author and illustrator of Joyful Song: A Naming Story

Sydney Taylor Honor Book in the Picture Book Category 
at The Horn Book

Sidura Ludwig and Sophia VincentGuy, author and illustrator of Rising
Sydney Taylor Honor Book in the Picture Book Category

at 100 Scope Notes

Josh Levy, author of Finn and Ezra’s Bar Mitzvah Time Loop

Sydney Taylor Honor Book in the Middle Grade Category

at The Book of Life

Ruth Behar, author of Across So Many Seas

Sydney Taylor Honor Book in the Middle Grade Category

at E Train Talks

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2025

Vesper Stamper, illustrator of Amazing Abe: How Abraham Cahan’s Newspaper Gave a Voice to Jewish Immigrants
Sydney Taylor Honor Book in the Picture Book Category
at Jewish Books for Kids

Elisa Boxer and Alianna Rozentsveig, author and illustrator of The Tree of Life: How a Holocaust Sapling Inspired the World
Sydney Taylor Honor Book in the Picture Book Category
at Jewish Book Council

A. J. Sass, auhor of Just Shy of Ordinary
Sydney Taylor Honor Book in the Middle Grade Category
at Bookishly Jewish

Sacha Lamb, author of The Forbidden Book  
Sydney Taylor Honor Book in the Young Adult Category
at Kayla Reads

Adam Gidwitz, author of Max in the House of Spies: A Tale of World War II; Deke Moulton, author of Benji Zeb is a Ravenous Werewolf; and Deborah Lakritz, author of Things That Shimmer
Sydney Taylor Notable Books in the Middle Grade Category
at Zoe Reads

Cambria Gordon, author of TrajectorySydney Taylor Honor Book in the Young Adult Category
at LitbyLilli

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2025

Danielle Sharkan and Selina Alko, author and illustrator of Sharing Shalom; Linda Leopold Strauss and Tim Smart, author and illustrator of Everybody’s Book: The Story of the Sarajevo Haggadah; Mark Kornblatt and Nanette Regan, author and illustrator of Mr. Katz and Me
Sydney Taylor Notable Books in the Picture Book Category
at Watch.Connect.Read

Edith Eva Eger, author of The Ballerina of Auschwitz; and Suzy Zail, author of Inkflower
Sydney Taylor Notable Books in the Young Adult Category
at From the Mixed Up Files

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2025

Blog Tour Wrap-Up at The Children’s Book Podcast

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