INTERVIEW: New book celebrates women who raised their voices, aka ‘Noisemakers’
Photo: Noisemakers is the first book from Kazoo, a magazine founded by Erin Bried. Photo courtesy of Superfan Promotions / Provided with permission.
Thanks to Knopf Books for Young Readers, the story of 25 powerful women will hit bookshelves and teach the next generation what it means to speak up and make an impact. Noisemakers: 25 Women Who Raised Their Voices & Changed the World, a graphic novel from the creators of Kazoo magazine, will be released Tuesday, Feb. 4.
Among the stories that young readers will be able to enjoy are the personal narratives of Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein; Josephine Baker, legendary performer; Eleanor Roosevelt, highly influential First Lady; Rosa Parks, civil rights activist; and Frida Kahlo, 20th-century Mexican painter.
Noisemakers is Kazoo’s first book, according to press notes, and it seems the editors are taking the same energy from their magazine publication and putting it into this graphic novel project. Contributors include everyone from Emil Ferris to Lucy Bellwood to K.L. Ricks and Sophie Goldstein.
Recently Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Erin Bried, founder and editor-in-chief of Kazoo. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
How did the idea for Noisemakers: 25 Women Who Raised Their Voices & Changed the World come about?
Kazoo is an award-winning, indie print magazine for girls, ages 5 to 12. Our tagline is ‘A Magazine for Girls who Aren’t Afraid to Make Some Noise,’ and our young readers call themselves ‘Noisemakers.’ In every issue, we run a six-page True Tales comic about a woman who’s made history, and her life always relates to the theme of the issue. For instance, Julia Child was beloved in part for laughing off her mistakes and persisting through them, so we featured her in our Magnificent Mistakes issue. We featured Jeanne Baret, the first woman to circumnavigate the world, in our Explorers issue; and pilot Bessie Coleman in our Flight issue. So the book and its title felt like a very natural extension of our magazine. While the book features some of the comics already ran in the magazine, most of them are brand new.
Kazoo’s mission is to celebrate girls for being strong, smart, fierce and true to themselves, and everything we do supports that mission. I’m so thrilled to introduce our young readers not only to so many of these amazing and powerful women in history — stories they may not otherwise learn — but also the amazing and powerful artists — all women and nonbinary — who brought their stories to life.
Do you feel it is important in these times to showcase the courage and leadership of strong female leaders?
1,000% yes. Our society is sending messages to girls all the time about what they can’t or shouldn’t do, and Noisemakers is a counter to that. Women have always been making history and changing the world. We’ve always been inventing new things, creating art, telling stories, leading movements, even when people told us we should stay home and stay quiet. Knowing these women have come before them, I hope, will give our readers the courage to raise their own voices.
Also, so much of what we’re facing today — fighting for our democracy, fighting for equal rights, fighting for our planet — feels overwhelming. These stories are proof that one person can make a big difference.
How did the team select the 25 women?
The book is broken into chapters, much [like] the magazine: Explore, Grow, Create, Tinker, Play and Rally. So, it made it easy to wrap our brains around. If you’d say make comics about any 25 amazing women in history, it’d be really tough to narrow down the field. But if you said, find three to five women who changed the way we think of building, or art, or activism, then it becomes an easier process.
Each comic is prefaced by a checklist, where we highlight character traits of each hero. We want our readers to see themselves in each of these women. For instance, the idea of becoming a world-famous paleontologist might sound like an impossible or distant dream for an 8-year-old, but if she realizes that she has all the same qualities that Mary Anning had — a love of climbing, drawing, digging for seashells — then it feels a lot closer and more possible. We want to get across the idea that greatness that resides in each of our featured Noisemakers also resides in every girl reading the book. She too can be anything. That’s the thread that ties the whole book together.
Are there any women on the list who are particularly inspiring to you?
I think about the women in this book so often. Their stories have stayed with me. I live in Brooklyn, and so I can’t look at the Brooklyn Bridge without thinking of Emily Warren Roebling and all she went through to see it built. I love Nellie Bly’s story. She got her start by penning an absolutely scathing letter to the editor of her local paper and went on to become a journalist and tell stories that truly made a difference to people’s lives. That’s every journalist’s dream! I’m inspired by Madam CJ Walker, who built her business from the ground up at a time when people told her she couldn’t, especially when I launched a successful, ad-free, indie print magazine while major magazines seem to be folding every other day. I honestly could go through the entire book and tell you how each of these stories have touched my own life, making me feel stronger, braver and bolder. I hope it does the same for everyone who reads the book.
Who is the ideal audience for this graphic novel?
We envisioned the audience to be the same as our magazine — girls, 5 to 12. When I talked to each of the artists before they began their comic, I asked them to imagine that they’re telling this story to a 7-year-old girl with two missing front teeth and grass-stained knees. That was the reader we had in mind. Seeing the book come together, though, I think that audience feels too small. It’s fit to inspire anyone, especially because so many of these stories are not widely known. Everyone will learn something from Noisemakers, certainly about these women, but also about themselves.
Was it important to have a diverse group of women as well? It seems that the list is quite expansive in scope, culture and time period.
Oh, absolutely. Kazoo’s mission is to celebrate girls for being strong, smart, fierce and true to themselves, and it would be impossible to fulfill that mission if we did not feature a diverse roster of heroes. I want every kid who picks up Noisemakers to see something of themselves in these pages.
If you could do another list of 25, who would be some top candidates?
Just 25? LOL. I’ve got lists and lists, but to start: environmentalist Rachel Carson; ‘Stagecoach Mary’ Fields, the first woman postal carrier; Florence Nightingale, who invented modern nursing; opera singer and civil rights activist Marian Anderson; underwater archeologist Honor Frost. I could keep going!
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Noisemakers: 25 Women Who Raised Their Voices & Changed the World, the first-ever book from Kazoo, will be released Tuesday, Feb. 4. Click here for more information.
