Staff Reporter
Maus is a highly acclaimed graphic novel about the Holocaust in which six million Jews died at the hands of the Nazis during World War 2 in the early 1940s.
The story, written by Art Spiegelman and showing Jews as mice and Nazis as cats, is about how his parents survived the death camps.
This week a school board in the American state of Tennessee voted to ban the book from Grade 8 at the school on the grounds that it used words that were “inappropriate”. They also objected to the drawing of a nude.
The banning of the book comes as conservatives across America target schools over teachings about the history of slavery and racism.
Rightwing supporters of former president Donald Trump are using the slogan of “parental control” to impose an extreme rightwing agenda on schools.
In Florida, for instance, a law is being crafted that would ban materials that make kids feel “discomfort, guilt or anguish” because of their race.
The law is designed to prevent white kids from learning about what really happened in United States history.
But it’s not just the history of racism and violence that these kids are being shielded from.
A Mississippi mayor is withholding thousands of dollars from a library until it purges all books with gay themes – including an essay collection by the gay pop singer Elton John which is describe as “homosexual material”.
But kids should not worry: once they have banned all the books, there will still be some reading matter left.
The state of Oklahoma is looking to pass a law that will name the Bible as the official state book.
