Maus hit different after I read it with my kid

I always thought the ban debate was overblown until my 12 year old brought it home from the library last month. We read a few pages together and I kept having to stop to explain the Holocaust context she didn't know. That's when I realized the book wasn't the problem, it was parents like me who never talked about it. Has anyone else had a banned book click for them when they actually shared it with someone?

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evan_stone23d ago

That's the part that always gets me about these debates. The people fighting to ban it act like the book is corrupting kids, but the actual danger is letting them read it alone without any context. My nephew found a copy at a garage sale when he was 14 and got the wrong idea about the whole thing. He thought it was just a sad animal story and missed every point about how regular people become complicit in terrible things. It took a long conversation with his dad to straighten him out, and even then I'm not sure he fully gets it. So what happens when a kid picks it up and nobody is there to fill in the blanks? Is the answer really to make sure fewer kids have that chance?