Tennessee parents, teachers push back against ‘Maus’ removal

ATHENS, Tenn. — Growing up in rural eastern Tennessee, James Cockrum hadn’t given much thought to the possibility that one day he might find himself speaking about his Jewish heritage in front of a packed school board meeting. But four days after news broke that the McMinn County school board unanimously voted to remove a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust from the district’s curriculum, Cockrum celebrated the birth of his daughter. After the board quietly removed “Maus” last month, February’s meeting was packed with concerned parents, teachers and students who spilled into an overflow room to see how the board would respond to the criticism. Instead, the board demurred to a lengthy statement issued weeks earlier justifying its determination that “Maus” — a graphic novel in which Jews are portrayed as mice and Nazis as cats in the retelling of the horrific Holocaust experience of the author’s parents — was inappropriate for children because of curse words and a depiction of a nude corpse, which was drawn as a cartoon mouse. On Jan. 10, McMinn school board members called a special meeting to discuss “Maus,” only a day before their district’s eighth graders were scheduled to begin reading the book.