Bookpleasures.com is excited to welcome as our guest Ellen M. Shapiro, graphic designer, writer, and author of the poignant debut novel The Secret Buttons. 

Drawing inspiration from her mother’s WWII memories, Ellen’s novel follows two sisters as they flee Nazi-occupied Vienna, brought to life by Caterina Baldi’s vivid illustrations. Today, we’ll explore its powerful themes of bravery, creativity, and survival.

Norm: Hello, Ellen, and thank you for joining us for this interview. How did the idea for The Secret Buttons first form in your mind, and when did you begin to imagine it as an illustrated novel rather than text-only?

Ellen: Thank you for inviting me to Book Pleasures. It’s my pleasure to be here. 

The idea for The Secret Buttons had been bubbling in my mind for several years. After my mother died in 2007 — at age 92! — I was still haunted by one sentence she told me when I was about ten years old: “When I was in England during the blackouts and the Blitz, I crocheted around diamonds and turned them into buttons for sweaters that refugees wore on the boats to America.” 

She warned me not to repeat it to anyone — especially strangers — but I always knew there was a story in there. When I mentioned it to a few people, they were astonished and curious. 

Your mom did that? Really? How? Why? I wondered about all that myself and could kick myself for not insisting that she divulge the details. 

Though, honestly, if I had, she would have changed the subject (and then told me it would be okay to tell the story after she died).

Fast-forward to four years ago when I was the Jewish Studies teacher for a class of fifth through seventh graders at a local synagogue. To say that those kids — mostly boys —were unruly and disruptive is an understatement. 

Every lesson plan I devised, from Maccabees vs. Syrians war games to learning about Israeli soccer turned into bedlam. I finally said, “Since you have to be here, what DO you want to learn about?” 

The answer, the Holocaust. Wow. To them it was a big mysterious secret that involved the baddest bad guy ever, Hitler, death camps, and gas chambers. And Anne Frank hiding in an attic and then being taken away to perish.

Education directors and teachers at religious schools want Judaism to be upbeat and joyful. The year before, the rabbi at another synagogue crossed out the words ‘Holocaust survivor’ in the talk I’d prepared to introduce myself to the families of the fifth graders. 

I hunted for materials and could not find a “Holocaust book” appropriate for the rowdy boys in my class. Most were above their reading and comprehension level. 

Many were memoirs by adult survivors writing about their time as children in the camps. In well-known fiction books, the children are passive victims who do not solve problems or move the plot forward—a requirement for middle-grade and YA books today. 

Writing the book became a way to answer the questions I and others had about my mother’s experiences and the experiences of others who not only survived but thrived in a new country and culture. 

I imagined the book as an illustrated novel from the minute I started writing. As a graphic designer and art director I’ve worked with illustrators my whole career, whether I’m designing an ad campaign or magazine. 

I tried out various illustration styles on my own, such as using historical photographs, maps, and newspaper clippings as background collages, and having an illustrator draw the characters and place them in the setting. Too complicated, too abstract. 

When I saw Caterina Baldi’s paintings, with their European architecture and street scenes, their realistic, non-cartoon-y characters, beautiful color schemes and lighting, I knew she was the artist I wanted to work with. 

Norm: When did Caterina Baldi join the project? Was it before you completed the manuscript, during revisions, or after copy editing?

Ellen: Caterina joined the project when I was working on one of the later drafts and had finally figured out where to start the story and where it needed to go: First, in crowded Wein Westbanhoff Station as the girls say goodbye to Mutti, their mother.

Then on the train squeezed in next to a portly man who’s laughing over newspaper cartoons of big-nosed Jews. Next, arriving at their new home in the English countryside where “everything is different.” 

Each of those moments began to take form in my mind as a scene that could be painted. 

Norm: How did you and Caterina discuss the visual direction, including tone, palette, and scene selection? Did you communicate mainly through the publisher, direct conversations, or annotated text?

Ellen: Caterina and I discussed everything online, through reedsy.com, which helps authors find illustrators and editors. She lives and works on the eastern, Adriatic side, of Italy, and I’m in New York. 

We’ve never spoken, even on the phone, yet we communicated perfectly.

Norm: Did you share research materials, historical photographs, or family stories with Caterina to ensure visual authenticity? If so, which items were most useful to her?

Ellen: Yes. For each chapter I sent her a one-paragraph description of what I considered the essential scene. For example: Chapter 5, ‘Digging a Hole.’ It’s July, hot, the vegetables in the back garden are ripe. 

Anni is reading the directions for building the Anderson Shelter all British residents must install behind their houses. Rosie is bundled up in a siren suit (overalls to be worn during air raids), sweating, helping Cousin Ronald dig the hole for the shelter. 

The boy next door, Keith, is hopping over the fence. Caterina had already established the characters and the setting, has drawn a map of the village with its high street, church, hills in the distance. 

As she began sketching the composition, I uploaded a folder with the ‘scrap’ needed for reference: a printout of the actual instruction sheet for building an Anderson Shelter; photos of the metal shelter parts, of the back doors and garbage cans in England at the time, the gas masks and siren suits, the flowers that would be in bloom. In the course of designing the book, I researched furniture, cars, wallpaper, kitchen tools, bicycles, radios, post office boxes, posters, lamps for use during blackouts, etc. etc., and of course, clothing and hairstyles.

 I thoroughly enjoyed being the book’s weather person, costume designer and set decorator, and including stuff kids today can relate to: dog-walking, Dorothy’s ruby slippers, Frankenstein, Coca-Cola bottles, references to Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret, a juke box, banana splits — so the book can transmit that this isn’t ancient history, it’s kind of like today. 

Caterina put all the elements together into compelling paintings that tell so much of the story themselves. (This page has a visual explanation of how we worked together.)

Norm: The postal code using garden and knitting terminology is a creative detail. Was this inspired by actual codes your family used, or did you develop it for the novel? How did you ensure the system felt authentic to the period and accessible to young readers?

Ellen: I’m laughing because I made it all up, stuff like “chocolate sauce = blackouts.” In graphic design we use a lot of charts and diagrams. 

I’ve designed New York City budget presentations for Mayor Koch and financial presentations and annual reports for many organizations. Making an illustrated chart is what I would have done as a kid and I do now. I’m glad you appreciate that chart and hope many others will too. 

To ensure it felt authentic, I did the kind of research that informed just about everything in the book. On September 3, 1939, when Britain declared war on Germany (and Austria had been ‘annexed,’ so it was part of Germany) no letters could go through the postal service. 

I learned from the Postal History Corner by the late Andrew Liptak how mail could be sent between England and Axis countries using a go-between in a neutral country. It was fun to make up a name and address for my go-between in Spain. 

Even if a letter did go through, sensitive information about war activities was censored. So devising a code was a natural. 

You just gave me an idea: Right now I’m working on an interactive SecretButtons.com website where readers can post their own immigration stories and drawings. 

There will be a prompt for readers to make up a code or chart that could help them navigate challenges in their own lives.

Norm: Including a Holocaust survivor and his artwork is a sensitive choice for a middle-grade book. What guided your decisions on how much to depict and how explicitly to address the camps? How did you determine the appropriate level of honesty for your audience?

Ellen: I wrote the book along a timeline that ends two years before “murder operations begin in death camps,” as “the final solution” is described on some websites. 

The story (classified by Amazon as both “for readers 10 and up” and “teen and young adult”) is told from the point of view of Anni Blum, who’s 12 years old when the book opens. She cannot know what has not happened yet. 

She knows her father has been taken away to a labor camp, because postcards arrive with “they are treating me well” in his handwriting. She knows the camp is a bad place, but has no way of knowing what’s really going on there and what might happen there three years later. 

Horrific memories, flashbacks, interrupt her first-person, present-tense realities in rural England: Nazi soldiers marching through the center of Vienna as Hitler addresses cheering crowds. 

She can’t stop remembering the morning she and her little sister Rosie visited their favorite needlework shop, smashed and looted. And how the park was shut tight to her and all museums and restaurants closed to Jews. 

She can’t forget how badly the building of the indoor playground went when the hostess whose “parlor as big as a ballroom” had to scrub the sidewalk in front of taunting neighbors. 

She endures the memory of visiting her grannies, who’ve been moved to a freezing ghetto apartment. I did a lot of research on life in prewar and wartime England, too, so necessary scenes take place that involve, in addition to building and sleeping in backyard bomb shelters, blackout curtains, ration books, and an actual bombing with a serious injury. Meeting Anton, the Auschwitz survivor, shocks Anni into action. Who are you, what are you doing here, what can you do to help? she asks herself that night. 

My goals? Keep the story moving, realistic, generate suspense. But don’t make it too scary. Someday young readers will see Sophie’s Choice or read Primo Levi’s memoir of survival in Auschwitz. But not now 

Norm: You present everyday skills such as knitting, crocheting, and coding messages as acts of courage and survival. What led you to focus on these “quiet rebellions” instead of more dramatic resistance? 

What do you hope young readers will learn about heroism through everyday creativity?

Ellen: My mother and her sister, my Aunt Gerry, were always knitting and crocheting. I inherited lace pillowcases and tablecloths made by my maternal grandmother and her sister. 

When my younger brother graduated from high school and Mom felt it was proper to work outside the home, she opened a knitting shop in Inglewood, California, where we grew up. 

There were always customers around her knitting table, working, chatting, asking for and getting advice from Mom. Knitting was — and is — relaxing, creative, fun, social, and becomes challenging as the stitches and patterns get more difficult. 

And it allows you to have a larger, more fashionable wardrobe than what you could afford to buy. I remember my fraternal grandmother showing me a big fuzzy collar she’d made for her old coat, saying, “It looks just like fur!” 

In terms of everyday survival, or at least comfort, in the period the book takes place, 1938–1941, mending was more important than knitting and crocheting: mending stockings, lengthening hems, remaking dresses, unraveling old sweaters and washing the yarn to make new ones.

It was not my intention to present needlework skills themselves as acts of courage or rebellion, rather to present the situation that interrupted the knitting — Anni’s interrogation of the German pilot — as heroism. 

It’s an important turning point when she realizes she can stand up and courageously help the British officers and the Allies. I also hope that kids notice that because Anni is finally fluent in English, she can translate the German soldier’s insults and talk right back to him in her native language. Being bilingual has its benefits.

Heroism through everyday creativity? Today’s kids are already doing it: knitting scarves for refugees in camps and for homeless people, making caps for people undergoing cancer treatment. 

My characters include two boys who knit. I hope boys who read the book notice them and will give making things for others a try. They could also serve meals at homeless shelters and deliver clothing through programs like the Midnight Run. 

These activities usually take place in or are sponsored by churches and synagogues. An important theme of the book is Anni and Rosie’s spiritual growth. 

They come from a secular environment and are now in a home where Shabbat dinners and Passover Seders are taken seriously. Readers can experience how that changes them. 

Norm: You address the Holocaust, displacement, family separation, and trauma for a middle-grade audience. What principles guided you in making these topics accessible while maintaining their seriousness? 

Were there subjects or scenes you chose not to include?

Ellen: I chose not to include scenes of the destruction and death in London. Knowledge of apartment buildings bombed to rubble and people sleeping in the subways are communicated to Anni and Rosie through newspaper front-page photos and headlines, radio broadcasts, and the comments of other characters, like one of the ‘church ladies,’ whose sister has to sleep in ‘the tube.’ 

I seriously considered having Uncle B and Aunt V take the girls to London for a Sunday dinner and the theater — which went on during wartime, according to my mother — but decided to keep the story on the straight and narrow in three locations (in addition to the train and two boats): in Vienna, through flashbacks; in Tuppinshire, my fictional village located under the flight path from Munich to London; and in Brooklyn, New York (with a trip to the Diamond District on 47th Street in Manhattan. 

I chose to make the topics accessible by framing them through the experiences of (mostly) lovable, charming characters ☺. 

Norm: Anni and Rosie’s reunion and new beginning in Brooklyn provide hope and closure. How did you approach writing an ending that balances optimism with the reality that many families were not reunited and many stories did not end happily?

Ellen: That’s a question that people keep asking and people keep trying to answer, through books, articles, movies, public speaking, and more. In a New York Times interview with an elderly camp survivor, the answer was summed up in one word: “Luck.”

At the end of Chapter 15, “Another Arrival,” Mutti and Papa try to answer the question when Rosie asks, “Why could we come here and not them (the grannies)?” Papa answer: “It’s random. 

No one knows why some people were selected to be moved to a ghetto or taken away while others survive.” Mutti adds, “Many people died. Many children. Children from our old neighborhood and your schools. Now, people are being taken to the camps in even greater numbers. 

The conditions are much worse, we hear.” How could that be? Anni wonders. What could be worse than breaking rocks until S.S. men beat you over the head and break your teeth? 

Then Mutti says, “And here we are, together again. Later this week we’ll get you registered at the neighborhood schools. Now it’s time to see your room.” 

My characters personify the lack of knowledge of what hasn’t happened yet, plus wishful thinking and the optimism you mention. With a little denial thrown in. “Let’s not talk about that! Now it’s time to see your room. Look at the beautiful bedspreads I made for you.”

Norm: Where can readers learn more about you and The Secret Buttons?

Ellen: I invite everyone to visit my WEBSITE, where there’s lots about me and The Secret Buttons including links to a video of hands flipping through the whole book and a video of Caterina making the painting that opens Chapter 2.

Other pages introduce my other books, magazine writing, and portfolio of work for clients. I have quite a few radio interviews scheduled and invite readers to listen in live or to the podcasts. I also want to hear from readers! 

I hope SecretButtons.com will be live soon, so they can post their comments, stories, and, yes, charts and codes. 

Norm: As we conclude, although the story is set in 1939-1941, its themes of children fleeing persecution and seeking a sense of belonging remain relevant. 

Do you view The Secret Buttons as a historical novel, or do you hope readers will connect it to current refugee crises? How do you hope the book will influence young readers’ empathy and understanding?

Ellen: All of the above! It’s important to know what others experienced in a not-so-long-ago time in history. But it’s also important to be aware of how governments can, slowly, step-by-step, enact discriminatory legislation and practices while claiming it’s for the greater good. 

Chapter 9, “Uncle Benjamin’s Dilemma,” opens with one of Caterina’s most brilliant paintings, a lineup off all the people ultimately slated for extermination by the Nazi regime, assimilated and orthodox Jews, homosexuals (depicted wearing a pink upside-down triangle patch), dark-skinned people, Roma people (“gypsies”), people with severe disabilities. 

When we learn that immigration to the U.S. is banned from counties where the majority of the population have dark skin but that white South Africans are welcome, I hope adult readers will protest. 

And, of course, I hope young readers will welcome classmates who are new to America, might not look like them, and are struggling with English — and will treat them with empathy and try to help them fit in.

Norm: Thanks, once again and good luck with all of your future endeavors.

Follow Here To Read Norm's Review of The Secret Buttons