Maus

I am slightly ashamed to admit that I have only been introduced to graphic novels within the past year. Okay, month. I had no idea how versatile, widely encompassing, and supplementary they can be. Just last week, I used a graphic novel in my English 10 classroom. The students were really struggling to understand the plot and events in Macbeth by simply reading the text aloud. When I brought the graphic novel in, however, the visual aspect engaged the students and brought them to a whole new level of comprehension. Never again will I doubt the graphic novel! I really enjoyed reading Art Spiegelman's Maus. Beyond just the beneficial visual aspect of the novel, I love the characters that he incorporated as well as the dialogue. A class using this book could look simply at the animal choices that he uses in his book and discuss why they think he chose the ones he did to represent the different people. I love that Spiegelman also incorporated his father's accent into the dialogue. It makes his character much more realistic. I also really like that the reader can see the aftermath of the war and the concentration camps in the relationships in the book, such as art's father with his new wife, art with his father, art with his late mother, and so on. The students could look at the various relationship dynamics that take place throughout the book. I think this book would be extremely effective in the classroom. Not only would the students be engaged and interested in reading it, there are also almost endless possibilities for teaching, all of which incorporate both history and literature. This book would be awesome to use in a history course -- a subject where students are often used to reading only out of the textbooks. I would love to use this novel in my future English courses, as well.