Response: Maus by Art Spiegelman

This was the most recent holocaust text I have read since reading "Night" by Elie Wiesel my freshmen year of high school. As they usually do, holocaust texts have a hard and heavy impact when I read them, and it takes a certain degree of seriousness and strong doses of reality. However, these graphic novels allow for both a distance and a different kind of closeness to the survivors stories being told. 

In the 9th grade, I took a pre-AP English class (It was the only advanced English class offered to freshmen) and absolutely loved it. One of the things we did in the class, after reading "Night" the entire class went to the online database which lists the details of every living holocaust survivor, including the story of their experiences in the death camps in WWII. We were asked to pick a survivor who is still living, and, based on their story, create a children's book, changing the survivor and their friends and family into animals, choosing carefully what kind of animals represented the survivor we chose, their family, and the German's. We illustrated and wrote and permanently bound our books which were then sent to the holocaust museum, as well as we sent a copy of the book and a letter the the survivor that we chose. I imagine that my teacher might have gotten part of this idea from Maus. I wish I had read these graphic novels before. I think they are greatly powerful and shed a different sort of light on the stories of survivors.