Graphic Novels for Multiple Literacies.

Abstract

One day after German class, a young man came up to me with a in hand. He was a bright high school student with good grades, but he usually clowned around when talking to me; this time he was quite serious. Look, you should read this, he said. He showed me a copy of Maus: A Survivor's Tale (1986) by Art Spiegelman, a version of the Holocaust in which mice were the Jews and cats the Nazis. The story is based on Spiegelman's father's survival of Auschwitz. Before reading Maus, I had no idea a comic book could be so powerful. Maus went on to win the Pulitzer Prize, the first graphic novel to do so, and I recommended it to other students.