Maus and Maus 2

When I discover a really powerful text, I want to share it with everyone, including my students. I bought the Maus books at The Strand way back in my NYC teaching days. I'm pretty sure I read them both in a weekend. It was such an interesting juxtaposition between the heavy Holocaust details and the graphic novel elements of cat and mouse drawings. Art Spiegelman, the author, wrote and illustrated the text based on his father's memories of surviving the Holocaust. I have a hard time getting through any Holocaust story without tears, and this was no exception.

When I used the text in my classroom, I focused on a short section that revealed a lot of the details of the treatment of the prisoners in the concentration camps. The words and the images worked together to create a true understanding of their treatment. This lesson was very successful with a high school special education class where many of the students were low reading ability, but very strong visual learners. My Asperger students showed empathy for the concentration camp prisoners through the use of this text and subsequent class discussions.

It also has a special impact when you introduce a book as being one from your personal library or one of your favorites. It makes it much more fun to teach when you are impassioned about a text, but it also shows your students that you respect them and value them enough to share something that is very "grown up" and very you.

Maus Lessons