Banned Book Club Selection #2

In response to the drastic increase of challenges from the right against controversial books, often involving important themes of race, gender and sexuality, let's read some banned books!

Good morning and happy Friday! I am excited to announce that the second selection for our SHERO Banned Book Club will be the Pulitzer Prize Winner: MAUS, by Art Spiegelman. This is a provocative book about the child of holocaust parents exploring their Holocaust experience through the medium of a graphic novel. Spiegelman wanted to be a comic book artist, illustrator, and writer of graphic novels and his book brilliantly presents the horrific details of Nazi Germany by depicting Jews as mice and Nazis as cats.

I have been wanting to read this book, as it has been recommended to me many times, so let’s read it together and marvel over Spiegelman’s brilliance and the importance of the themes. We will take two weeks to read this selection and focus on Maus I, as it should be a fairly quick read, and you can move on to MAUS II if you have time. I will hold a live discussion session about our experiences with the book on my Callin podcast on Wednesday, April 20 at 4 pm/ET and 1 pm Pacific.

For those of you who like to read along with a study guide with questions (Hi, Mom!) you can find those here. We will be roughly following this outline when we have our final book club discussion, but we can ultimately go wherever the conversation takes us. If you like to read for leisure and don’t want a classroom format, then read without the study guide, as it will not be necessary to participate.

We will also officially be reading MAUS I, but I would encourage you to get the complete edition and move on to MAUS II if you finish early and have time. Feel free to leave questions or comments on this post if you have them before April 20, just make sure not to reveal any spoilers for those who may be behind you.

Let’s read!

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Amee Vanderpool writes the SHERO Newsletter and hosts the live SHERO podcast on Callin. She is an attorney, published author, contributor to newspapers and magazines, and analyst for BBC radio. She can be reached at avanderpool@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter @girlsreallyrule.