Do you end up saying “just one more chapter” every night? Or maybe you haven’t read a book in forever. Either way, our new Teen Book Club is perfect for all young adult readers!
This month, we will be reading Maus by Art Spiegelman. This harrowing tale of one of the worst atrocities in history is told through the eyes of a mouse, as he recounts his experiences of being persecuted by the Nazi cat regime.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus tells the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler’s Europe, and his son, a cartoonist coming to terms with his father’s story. Maus approaches the unspeakable through the diminutive. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), shocks us out of any lingering sense of familiarity and succeeds in “drawing us closer to the bleak heart of the Holocaust” (The New York Times).
Maus is a haunting tale within a tale. Vladek’s harrowing story of survival is woven into the author’s account of his tortured relationship with his aging father. Against the backdrop of guilt brought by survival, they stage a normal life of small arguments and unhappy visits. This astonishing retelling of our century’s grisliest news is a story of survival, not only of Vladek but of the children who survive even the survivors. Maus studies the bloody pawprints of history and tracks its meaning for all of us.
Our next book is Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell. After our first two meetings, book club members will select the next read. Our first meeting will be at the Aurora Public Library on January 24th at 4 pm. Everyone ages 13 to 19 is welcome to attend. Registration is recommended but not required.
We would like to include a trigger warning for suicide and abuse for this book.
Books will be available for pickup at the library soon! We hope to see you there.
For the second year in a row, NoveList has created a year long reading challenge to help people stretch their reading comfort zones. The challenge gives 24 prompts for readers: 12 for beginners and 12 for aficionados. My goal is to complete all 24 prompts this year. I’ll be making my way through the list and writing reviews about the books I really like. You can find the full reading challenge 
Holocaust. We follow Vladek all the way through the war: from his time as a POW, his time in a ghetto, his multiple hiding spots in between, and finally to his time in Auschwitz and Dachau. He tells of the people and family members he met and lost along the way, and the horrors he faced during those six years. The novel ends after Vladek tells the story of his return to his hometown at the end of the war and his reunion with his wife Anya, Art’s mother. The last panel is an image of Anya’s and Vladek’s tombstone. Anya died by suicide in 1968 and Vladek of congestive heart failure in 1982 before the book was completed.
