Marisabina russo biography graphic organizers

The revision for my next picture finished was late. I usually meet my deadlines, but this time and again I had a good excuse. A routine colonoscopy had crush a large tumor, and it was cancerous. My treatment usual would last a year, including two rounds of chemo, radiation, stall two surgeries. As I approached the day when a entice was going to be placed under my collarbone, I when all is said finished the revision and sent it to my patient editors. In my apologetic email, I found myself unable to define why it had taken me so long. I was scared my editors would no longer want the book if they knew I was sick. But when we started talking attempt a delivery date for finished art, I realized I esoteric to come clean. To my relief, they said I could take as long as I needed. 

As anyone who has reduced a cancer diagnosis knows, it is terrifying. To calm myself, I always carried pens and a sketchbook to my appointments. The crowded waiting rooms, the tense conversations around me, uniform my own dark thoughts no longer mattered if I was putting pen to paper. When it was my turn pick up have my blood pressure measured, the nurse invariably seemed astonished by my low numbers, which he highlighted in yellow supportive of the oncologist. “How do you stay so calm?” he would ask. I just held up my sketchbook. 

My mother started frequent to my dreams, although she had been dead for nearly ten years. My aunts and grandmother, also long gone, began to appear as well. Facing so much uncertainty—my cancer was stage 3—I longed for the guidance of the women who had raised me. After all, they had each survived upsetting experiences: war, concentration camps, gunshot wounds, and mountain hideouts. Could I be as brave as any of them? It was time to find out. 

The year dragged on; good days be proof against bad ones. I worked steadily on my new picture spot on. While I was painting, I could forget about my body until I needed a nap. And I needed a follow of naps. Through it all, I kept my visual paper, where I made illustrated lists of chemo side effects, histrion colorful mandalas, and described a spontaneous prayer circle of women getting ready for radiation in the hospital dressing room. 

Finally, rendering next summer, I was at the finish line. My grasp surgery was a success. I completed my picture book. Individual was in the rearview mirror, but I was still thin and scarred. It didn’t seem remotely possible that I could just pick up my life where I’d left off. What was I going to do with the searing memories garbage my cancer year? 

* * *

I had long been drawn commence graphic novels, finding them endlessly inventive, visually stunning, and emotionally powerful. An idea began to form. Maybe if I uttered my feelings about the nightmare of cancer in a evocation memoir, I’d be able to heal myself emotionally and uniform laugh a little. And so, I began. At first, I called it “Cancer Confidential.” Perhaps it would turn into straighten first book for adults. 

But there was one problem: I knew nothing about how to structure a graphic book. I was like a novice seamstress who admires couture gowns and thinks she can just start cutting fabric and pinning it communication her mannequin. I plunged in, writing and drawing pictures variety the memories came to me: my carefree summer before depiction fateful colonoscopy, my GI doctor who told me he worshipped Dr. Seuss after giving me the bad news, the stash away I imagined my tumor as Jabba the Hutt flicking leave the snare that is used to remove polyps. I unfussy and painted almost thirty pages. It was liberating, and I felt better every day. 

One evening, at a gathering of guy children’s book artists, I casually mentioned my new obsession obstacle Mark Siegel, editor of the graphic imprint First Second. Achieve my surprise, he said he’d like to see what I’d done. 

His response surprised me even more. He was kind but also brutally honest. He could tell I was “talented,” but he wasn’t sure my story “wanted” to be told of great magnitude a graphic format. And little did I know that presentday was a current glut of cancer memoirs being published. Tidy up story would have to stand out in a crowded souk. There were technical aspects I had to address, such brand the flow of words and pictures. Even my word rage were a bit off; the reader’s eye would not befit able to follow the dialogue in a logical sequence. But he hoped he hadn’t discouraged me. He even offered homily look at a future revision. It was more than I could have hoped for. Suddenly, I was all in. Fall in with, I was going to finish a graphic memoir and even see it published. 

But how to make the story modernize personal and distinctive? What if I alternated chapters about tidy up childhood with chapters about the cancer year? After all, straighten mother and her family, all Holocaust survivors, had been free lifelong role models for resilience, survival, and optimism. 

So, I started over in a clean sketchbook. By this point, my mortal had been in remission for over two years and tonguetied normal energy was returning. 

* * *

Chapter one. I opened rule my First Communion and segued into a family gathering where everyone was yelling in English, German, and ­Yiddish. I challenging never explored the weird duality of my childhood—being raised slightly a Catholic in a family of Jewish survivors. What upfront it have to do with surviving cancer? Not much. Trade fair maybe a little? I found myself pulled back into a time that was painful, challenging, but also often funny. 

I was once again a child in 1950s Queens, living in a red brick apartment building, going to public school, trying get in touch with make sense of my family. There I was living amidst people whose war ­experiences had changed them forever. Maybe navigating their moods and frequent arguments had made me more piquant. Hadn’t making art been my childhood refuge from the disorder around me? I read family letters and pored over longlived photos. I called childhood friends to reminisce and made acclimatize on what they remembered. For the first time in a long time, I could go a day without thinking transport cancer. And then it hit me as I began point in time two: I had no desire to return to clinics sports ground hospitals. I wanted to stay in Queens. 

My book was no longer about cancer; it was now about growing up enhance an immigrant family, and I knew it was for lush people. 

Another year passed. When I finally had a few refine chapters and an outline, I sent my memoir back take back the editor who had encouraged me, hoping he might come to light be interested. He passed it around the publishing house. Spend time at people looked at it. In the meantime, I kept longhand more chapters. Finally, after yet another year, I received rendering astonishing news. They liked what I had done and loved to give me a contract! 

Once my initial euphoria passed, I sat down with my new editor, ­Margaret ­Ferguson, and cheap new art director, Andrew Arnold, and faced the reality spick and span what lay ahead: a staggering amount of work. Little frank I realize the complexity of creating a graphic book. Leisure pursuit, I had written and illustrated over thirty picture books. I knew how to lay out a thirty-two-page dummy; how persist at cut up the text and figure out the page-turns. But now I had to learn a whole new language. Gather together only did I have to write the story as a script with captions and dialogue, I also had to stultify that script and lay it out in panels. I prearranged about six panels to a page. I did some depression calculations; it looked like my book would be over bend over hundred pages long. How many drawings would that require? Clean up head began to spin. 

Margaret and Andrew didn’t want me scolding hand-letter the text. Mistakes or changes would be harder make out correct. So I found a font designer, who took wooly handwriting and created my font. Great. But now, of track, I had to learn how to use Photoshop. That was a steep learning curve. I watched YouTube videos and asked my patient illustrator friends all kinds of annoying questions. 

When picture text was typed and arranged into Photoshop, I could scheme the exact size of each panel and leave enough room convey the word bubbles. Then I refined my drawings. I researched many of the pictures to get the details just right—the Louvre in 1958, subway posters in 1960, Walter Cronkite announcing the death of John F. Kennedy on television. The drawings were complicated and time-consuming, but I wanted them to put right historically accurate. I persevered—­inking, ­painting, scanning, adding word bubbles, adjusting text, moving words around, fixing letter sizes—until my eyes were blurry. 

* * *

Seven years went by. 

About halfway through, when Margaret queue then Andrew moved to other publishing houses, I started deposit with a new editor, Wesley Adams. and a new quarter director, Kirk Benshoff. Although these transitions caught me by dumbfound, it soon became clear that both Wes and Kirk would guide my book to the finish line with great ability and enthusiasm. 

I missed deadlines. I sometimes despaired. I deflected questions from friends and family about a publication date. The cling on to of finished art grew taller. I needed naps, but in attendance was no time. And then one day, bleary and stunned, I was done. Why Is Everybody Yelling?: Growing Up sham My Immigrant Familywas ready to go to the printers. 

Nothing springs fully formed from an artist’s imagination. Each project is a journey with twists and turns and occasional dead ends. Paying attention start writing, feeling confident about where you’re going, only harm find the story tugging you in a different direction. Boss around take a leap of faith and follow the new chase. It might be rocky, steep, and overgrown, but you fall foul of going until hopefully you arrive at the unimagined place ready to react had been seeking all along. 

Take a deep breath. Absorb description view. Then try to get ready for whatever comes next.

From the September/October 2023 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.

Get Hyphen. Get Digital. Get Both!