Maus 1 & 2

I have never really read a graphic novel, until I had read Kampung Boy in a class last year for children's lit. Much to my surprise, I enjoyed that book, and could relate a lot to that book. The graphics were soft and nicely colored, and it was a pretty quick read (not very long). I bring this book up because as a graphic novel, Maus was so different. It had harsher colors, context, colors, and the overall theme was harder to deal with.

The beginning of the story was a little slow, and took a bit to pick up because it was setting the story up. Also, I feel that just reading it in the form of a graphic novel maybe took me a little bit. But after that, I got in to the story. I am from a Jewish background, so the content it already a little hard for me to read, as it usually is. I liked the way that Spiegelman told the story from his father's point of view, but also in a narrative form. I kind of brought you back out of the story to the "real" world of what's going on. I also found the use of the specific typed of animals interesting and what they represent. How "mice" are often seen as dispensable, and pests, and cats are the top of that food chain. And Americans are dogs, which are above the German cats.

I can see using this book in a classroom to teach about the Holocaust. I feel that a book like this would keep student's interest easier and they might be able to relate more to the way the story is written. I was worried that this would have belittled the historical part of the Holocaust by making it a cartoon with animals, but it actually worked well and was able to get the point across in different ways. This book would take a lot of pre-reading to get the kids kind of updated on graphic novels, how to read them and interpret them, and also to pair it with such a heavy topic, the Holocaust would need a pretty strong introduction.