It has been a bitter pill for me to swallow as a parent and as a bibliophile: my son does not love to read. Sure, I read to him daily when he was a toddler, and even once he learned to read to himself, we still spent many evenings reading books aloud as a family. (Thank you, J.K. Rowling for that.) But he's never been one to pick up a book on his own accord, even though bookshelves line almost every room of our house and even though I've got endless suggestions for books that I just know he'll love.
My son did not love to read, that is, until he was assigned Art Spiegelman's Maus: A Survivor's Tale. For those unfamiliar with the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, it's a graphic novel relating the biography of Spiegelman's father, a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor. In the novel, the Jews are depicted as mice, and the Germans as cats. It's one of the most powerful pieces of literature about the Holocaust, I'd argue, and while its format as a graphic novel makes it very accessible, that isn't to say that the content is watered down."