Teaching Resources for Art Spiegelman's Maus: A Survivor's Tale

One Book / One Bucks County 2005

• About the One Book One Bucks County Project
• About graphic novels and the selection of Maus for the One Book Project
• About this resource guide
• About Art Spiegelman
• About Maus
  • Background Notes
  • Chapter Summaries
  • Main characters
  • Themes/Issues
• Maus in the classroom
  • Resource Guide (Grades K-6)
  • Unit One: Literature Circles (Grades 7-10)
  • Unit Two: Interdisciplinary Webquest(Gr. 11-12) (Teacher Edition)
  • Student Edition
    (http://www.buckslib.org/ OneBook/Maus/unit2student.htm)

Bucks County Free Library

About this resource guide….

This guide is intended to aid teachers in using Maus in their classrooms and promoting the book among their students. Because the curricula of the public and private secondary schools in Bucks County vary widely, the guide must, of necessity, be somewhat general, offering teachers the opportunity to adapt the ideas to their specific needs. The two unit plans may be integrated into secondary English/Reading/Language Arts, Social Studies, or interdisciplinary studies curricula. Maus will have great appeal to most teenagers and will be especially helpful in reaching visual learners and reluctant readers.

We hope that secondary school teachers in our area will participate in this project by doing the following:

• read the book!
• promote the reading of Maus in their classrooms and among their students
• encourage lively discussions about the book with their students
• advertise some of the programs the libraries plan for the One Book project -- especially those developed for teenagers
• integrate Maus into existing curricula to increase student learning about world history, literature, and art

The Bucks County Free Library in cooperation with the Bucks County Intermediate Unit is providing this teaching resource guide for teachers' use. Any parts of the guide may be reproduced for use in the classroom.