Maus

From the beginning I wanted this blog to be a place for teachers, staff, administrators to "nerd out" (by that I mean, go beyond a book report) over what they're reading (in class, outside of class, wherever). Ann Sulzer has generously taken on the first entry with a write-up on reading Maus. I hope to have another entry in two weeks.  Thank you, Ann!

Maus

We decided to try reading MAUS I , a graphic novel by Art Spiegelman, next year in English 8, after about four years of reading The Book Thief and previous years reading Night, as part of our Peace and Conflict unit that started in our Humanities class.  The Book Thief is an amazing book in so many ways, but ultimately, its length has been overwhelming for us as teachers and, for many of our students, as readers.  We are just starting to explore MAUS as a piece of literature because our class focuses heavily on the language and word choice of the reading we do. This expands into our writing with the students as we prepare them for writing at a high school level. Much of our time is taken dissecting the lines of a novel and making sense of how a writer can build an argument around the ideas presented in the writing.  

With MAUS, we are not entirely certain how we will be able to get at some of these same concepts, since the story is told through frames of images instead of words. There is dialogue certainly, but much of the nuance and message of the novel lies in what students see, not what they read in words.  However, all of this complexity is part of why we chose to switch to MAUS in the first place. Our students live in such an image saturated world, but they rarely have the time or the thought process to try to make sense of those images that constantly bombard their senses. We're hopeful that by studying a graphic novel, our class will take the opportunity to pull apart those images in such a way that they can build meaning, much as we have in the past with the passages we've read in The Book Thief. 

However, there's more work to be done on our end in terms of trying to understand how to read and teach a graphic novel.  Already, we've identified passages of the book that show, rather than tell, some of the graphic stories of the Holocaust and WWII. We wonder if it will be harder for students to read a book where they actually see these frightening moments played out, or if it's more difficult if we construct those images in our imagination.  Also, what is the role of understanding these events when they are portrayed by animals: cats and mice instead of humans?  We are just beginning to tackle some of these questions for ourselves, and we are hoping to anticipate the questions our students will have. Ultimately, we're excited to take on a piece of literature that is so new to us in its presentation but clearly just as powerful as the novels we've read for this unit in the past.

-Ann Sulzer