Graphic Novels for ICSE Class 8: How to Read Maus (Art Spiegelman)
Updated 15 October 2026 · Fact-checked
A graphic novel tells a long story through sequences of drawn panels, speech balloons and captions. CISCE's Class VIII reading list suggests graphic novels such as Maus by Art Spiegelman, in which the author records his father Vladek's survival of the Holocaust, drawing Jews as mice and Germans as cats. It won a special Pulitzer Prize in 1992.
What Graphic Novels (Maus) is about
Graphic novels, with Maus by Art Spiegelman as the example, are on the Suggested Reading List for Class VIII in the CISCE Curriculum for Upper Primary Classes; they are recommended, not prescribed.
A graphic novel is a book-length story told in the form of comics: words and pictures work together, and the reader must 'read' both. This page has two parts: first, the tools of the form (panels, gutters, balloons, captions, visual symbols), which apply to any graphic novel your school chooses; second, a guide to Maus.
Maus was serialised in the magazine *Raw* from 1980 to 1991 and published in two volumes (1986 and 1991). In 1992 it received a Pulitzer Prize Special Award, the first graphic novel honoured by the Pulitzers. In it, the cartoonist Art Spiegelman interviews his father, Vladek, a Polish Jew who survived Auschwitz, and draws his story with the Nazis' racial categories turned into animals: Jews as mice, Germans as cats, Poles as pigs.
A note for readers: Maus is a true account of the Holocaust, in which Nazi Germany murdered about six million Jews. It includes death, violence and grief. It is best read with a teacher or parent, and it is a powerful way to understand how ordinary families lived through, and after, that history.
Weightage: Not prescribed: CISCE sets no literature texts for Class VIII and lists graphic novels (e.g. Maus) only as suggested reading. Your school decides whether to read and test them.Source: CISCE Curriculum for Upper Primary Classes (VI-VIII), RDCD 2016, English Literature: Suggested Reading List (Class VIII)
Graphic Novels (Maus): summary
In our own words, in the order of the text. Read the NCERT text itself too: the board quotes from it.
Two stories in one. Maus has two layers. The frame story takes place in 1978-79 in Rego Park, Queens (New York), where Art visits his elderly father, Vladek, to record his memories. Their relationship is difficult: Vladek is stubborn, anxious and extremely careful with money, and Art often loses patience. Vladek's second wife, Mala, also a survivor, finds him hard to live with. The main story is Vladek's past, from the mid-1930s to 1945.
Before the war. In Poland, Vladek, a young textile salesman, marries Anja, an intelligent woman from a wealthy family, in 1937. They move to Sosnowiec, where her family helps him set up a textile factory, and they have a son, Richieu.
War and persecution. When Germany invades Poland in 1939, Vladek is drafted, captured as a prisoner of war and held in a labour camp before returning home. Year by year, the Nazi occupation tightens: Jewish property is seized, families are moved into ghettos, and relatives are deported. To keep Richieu safe, the family sends him to relatives in another town; he does not survive the war, a loss that haunts the whole family.
Hiding and capture. Vladek and Anja hide in bunkers and with Polish acquaintances. They pay smugglers to take them to Hungary, but the smugglers betray them, and they are sent to Auschwitz. Separated, Vladek survives through skill, luck and resourcefulness, using his talents (as a tinsmith and shoemaker among other jobs) to stay useful and to help Anja when he can. As the war ends, he is moved through other camps, including Dachau, and after liberation he and Anja are reunited.
After. The frame story reveals the long shadow of these events. Anja died in 1968, and Vladek admits he destroyed the diaries she had kept, which Art wanted to read. Art struggles with guilt: about his brother, whom he never knew; about his difficult relationship with his father; and later about the success of the book itself. Vladek died in 1982, before the book was completed.
Themes and message
Survival
Vladek survives through resourcefulness, skill, luck and help from others; the book shows that survival often depended on chance as much as character.
From the text: His jobs in Auschwitz; the help he gives and receives.
Memory and its gaps
Maus is about how the past is remembered and passed on. Some memories are lost forever, like Anja's diaries.
From the text: Art recording his father; Vladek's admission that he destroyed the diaries.
Guilt
Survivors and their children carry guilt: for surviving, for those lost, for not understanding each other.
From the text: Art's feelings about Richieu, his father and the book's success.
Prejudice and racism
The book exposes Nazi racism through the animal metaphor, and also shows prejudice surviving after the war, even in Vladek himself.
From the text: The animal categories; Vladek's own prejudiced remarks in the frame story.
Father and son
The difficult relationship between Art and Vladek is as central as the history: the past shapes who Vladek became and how he treats his son.
From the text: Their arguments in Rego Park; Art's frustration and love.
Characters
Vladek Spiegelman
Art's father; Holocaust survivor
- resourceful
- determined
- stubborn
- anxious and thrifty in old age
Survives Auschwitz through skill and luck; difficult with Art and Mala in the frame story.
Art Spiegelman
Cartoonist and narrator
- curious
- impatient
- guilt-ridden
- honest
Interviews his father; struggles with their relationship and with telling the story.
Anja Spiegelman
Vladek's first wife; Art's mother
- intelligent
- sensitive
Survives Auschwitz; died by suicide in 1968; her diaries were destroyed.
Richieu
Art's older brother
- a child lost in the war
Sent to relatives for safety; did not survive.
Mala
Vladek's second wife
- survivor
- frustrated by Vladek
Complains of his stinginess and control.
How it is written
| Device | Example | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Frame narrative | 1978-79 interviews framing the 1930s-1945 story. | Shows how the past lives on in the present. |
| Visual metaphor | Mice, cats and pigs. | Exposes racial categories and the predator-prey relationship. |
| Vladek's voice | His broken English in the speech balloons. | Keeps his real voice and reminds us he is an immigrant survivor. |
Key concepts
- The tools of a graphic novel
- Panel: a single framed picture; its size and shape control pace (a large panel slows the reader; many small ones speed up action).
- Gutter: the gap between panels, where the reader imagines what happens in between.
- Speech balloon: what characters say; thought bubble: what they think.
- Caption: a box of narration, often the narrator's voice or a time and place.
- Sound effects and lettering: size and style of letters show loudness or emotion.
- Visual symbols and metaphors: images that stand for ideas.
Reading a graphic novel means reading words and pictures together and asking what each adds.
Worked example
Why might an artist use one very large panel after several small ones?
Try it first, then show the solutionSolution
- Small panels create quick, step-by-step action.
- A large panel stops the reader and emphasises a key moment.
Answer: To make the reader pause on a crucial or shocking moment, giving it weight after a fast sequence.
- The animal metaphor in Maus
Spiegelman draws Jews as mice, Germans as cats and Poles as pigs (with other nationalities as other animals). The cat-and-mouse image shows predator and prey, and it turns the Nazis' own racist idea, that Jews were vermin and a separate 'race', against them. At the same time, the book shows that these categories are absurd: individuals of every kind act well or badly, and characters sometimes wear masks of another animal to pass as something else.
Worked example
What is the effect of drawing Jews as mice and Germans as cats?
Try it first, then show the solutionSolution
- Predator and prey: shows the power imbalance and danger.
- Echoes and exposes the Nazis' dehumanising language.
Answer: It shows the deadly imbalance of power in a simple image, and it makes readers confront how Nazi propaganda reduced people to animals, while the story itself reveals each character as a full human being.
Graphic Novels (Maus) in real life
Each concept, met in an everyday situation. Read the situation, answer the question in your own words, then compare with the model answer. The one-line hook is what to remember.
Recording family memories
Suppose you interview your grandparents about their childhood for a school project.
What might you learn about your family, and how is this like Maus?
Try it first, then show the solutionSolution
- Elders hold memories that will be lost if not recorded.
- Listening can change how you understand them.
Answer: Like Art with Vladek, recording a family member's story preserves history and can deepen understanding between generations.
Memory hook: Ask before the stories are gone.
Labels that dehumanise
Imagine a group chat where people call a community by an insulting animal name.
Why is this dangerous, according to Maus?
Try it first, then show the solutionSolution
- The Nazis described Jews as vermin.
- Such language makes cruelty seem acceptable.
Answer: Dehumanising labels prepare the ground for cruelty; Maus shows where such language led.
Memory hook: Words that make people animals can make people cruel.
Pictures tell stories
Suppose you see a photograph of a crowded refugee camp in the news without any caption.
What does the picture tell you, and what do words add?
Try it first, then show the solutionSolution
- Images show conditions instantly and emotionally.
- Captions give facts: who, where, why.
Answer: Graphic novels combine both: images for impact, words for meaning. Reading them means attending to both.
Memory hook: Picture for feeling, caption for facts.
Topics in this chapter
How the school exam asks Graphic Novels (Maus)
The question patterns to expect, and the method that works for each.
| Question type | How it is asked | Method |
|---|---|---|
| Form questions | 'How do panels and captions help tell the story?' | Name the tool, give an example, explain the effect. |
| Symbol | 'Why does Spiegelman draw people as animals?' | Explain the metaphor, its link to Nazi propaganda, and its limits. |
| Character | 'Describe the relationship between Art and Vladek.' | Frame-story incidents; how the past affects it. |
| Theme essay | 'Maus is as much about memory as about the Holocaust.' Discuss. | Frame story, diaries, Art's guilt, conclusion. |
Tricks to remember Graphic Novels (Maus)
Short memory aids. Say each one aloud once, then use it on a question the same day.
Comic toolkit: P-G-B-C
Panel, Gutter, Balloon, Caption.
Use it when: Form questions.
Mice, Cats, Pigs
Jews mice, Germans cats, Poles pigs: 'Many Cats Prowl'.
Use it when: The animal metaphor.
Graphic Novels (Maus): exam-level solved questions
Ordered from exam level to HOTS. Cover the solution, write your own, then compare step by step.
Example 1: The form · 2 marks · Short answerExam level
What is a graphic novel, and how is it different from a comic strip?
Try it first, then show the solutionSolution
- Book-length story in comics form.
- A comic strip is a few panels, often a daily joke.
Answer: A graphic novel is a book-length story told in sequences of drawn panels with words, like a novel in comics form; a comic strip is a short sequence of a few panels, often a single joke or episode.
Example 2: Two time frames · 4 marks · Short answerHarder exam level
Explain the two time frames of Maus and why Spiegelman uses both.
Try it first, then show the solutionSolution
- Present: 1978-79, Rego Park interviews.
- Past: Vladek's life 1930s-1945.
- Purpose: show how the past shapes the present and how memory is passed on.
Answer: The present-day frame (1978-79) shows Art interviewing his elderly father in Rego Park, Queens; the main story shows Vladek's life in Poland from the 1930s to 1945. Using both shows how the Holocaust still shapes the family decades later, and how history is passed from survivor to child, with all its gaps, arguments and pain.
Example 3: Animals · 5 marks · Long answerHOTS / competency
Why does Spiegelman draw Jews as mice and Germans as cats? Mention one problem with the metaphor that the book itself shows.
Try it first, then show the solutionSolution
- Predator and prey.
- Turns Nazi racist language back on itself.
- Problem: people are not categories; individuals differ; masks.
Answer: Cats hunting mice is a simple, powerful image of the deadly power the Nazis held over Jews. It also exposes Nazi propaganda, which described Jews as vermin and as a separate race; by drawing the categories literally, Spiegelman makes their cruelty and absurdity visible. Yet the book also shows the metaphor's limits: within each 'species' people behave well or badly, characters sometimes wear masks to pass as another animal, and the categories cannot hold real human beings. So the animals both express and question the idea of race.
Example 4: Art and Vladek · 4 marks · Short answerHarder exam level
Describe the relationship between Art and his father in the frame story.
Try it first, then show the solutionSolution
- Love and duty: Art visits and records.
- Conflict: Vladek's stubbornness, thrift, control.
- Art's guilt and frustration.
- Understanding grows through the story.
Answer: Art loves his father and feels a duty to record his story, but they often clash: Vladek is stubborn, anxious and extremely careful with money, and he criticises and controls those around him. Art loses patience and then feels guilty. Through the interviews Art comes to see how Vladek's suffering shaped these habits, so the relationship mixes frustration, guilt and growing understanding.
Example 5: The diaries · 3 marks · Short answerHOTS / competency
Why is the loss of Anja's diaries important in Maus?
Try it first, then show the solutionSolution
- They held Anja's own account.
- Vladek destroyed them in grief.
- Her voice is missing; memory has gaps.
Answer: Anja's diaries held her own account of the war; Vladek destroyed them in his grief after her death. Their loss means her voice is missing from the story, which is told only through Vladek, and it shows that some memories of the Holocaust are lost forever. Art's anger at the loss shows how much the second generation longs to understand.
Where the marks are
How a typical answer is marked: the value points the examiner looks for and the marks each earns.
Form or theme answer (school paper). CISCE sets no Class VIII literature paper; this split is indicative. (5 marks)
| Step | Marks |
|---|---|
| Clear point | 1 |
| Relevant examples from the book (words and pictures) | 2 |
| Explanation of effect | 1 |
| Organisation and expression | 1 |
Where students lose marks in Graphic Novels (Maus)
The slips examiners see most often, and what to write instead.
Mistake: Calling Maus fiction
It uses animals and drawings.
Do this: Maus is a true account (memoir and biography) told in comics form.
Usually costs: Accuracy marks.
Mistake: Ignoring the pictures
Pupils discuss only the words.
Do this: Discuss panels, the animals and visual details too.
Usually costs: Analysis marks.
Mistake: Getting the animals wrong
Several nationalities appear.
Do this: Jews: mice; Germans: cats; Poles: pigs.
Usually costs: Accuracy marks.
Mistake: Writing carelessly about the Holocaust
The comics form can seem light.
Do this: Write with care and accuracy; name events correctly.
Usually costs: Tone and expression.
Practice questions on Graphic Novels (Maus)
Write each answer on paper first. Open the hint only if you are stuck, and the answer only when you have finished.
Q1 · 1 mark · MCQExam level
In Maus, Germans are drawn as: (a) dogs (b) pigs (c) cats (d) mice
Hint
The predator of mice.
Answer
(c) cats.
Q2 · 1 mark · Very short answerExam level
What is the gap between two panels called?
Hint
Like the channel at the edge of a roof.
Answer
The gutter.
Q3 · 1 mark · Very short answerExam level
Which award did Maus receive in 1992?
Hint
A famous American prize.
Answer
A Pulitzer Prize Special Award (in Letters).
Q4 · 2 marks · Short answerHarder exam level
How does Vladek manage to survive Auschwitz? Give two ways.
Hint
Skills and luck.
Answer
Any two: making himself useful with practical skills (e.g. as a tinsmith or shoemaker), resourcefulness in trading for food and favours, help from others, and luck.
Q5 · 4 marks · Long answerHarder exam level
Write a character sketch of Vladek in about 100 words.
Hint
Past and present Vladek.
Answer
Value points: young, confident and resourceful in the 1930s; protective of his family; survives by skill, wit and luck; loses his son Richieu; in old age stubborn, anxious, very thrifty and controlling; prejudiced in some attitudes; a complex survivor shaped by trauma.
Q6 · 4 marks · Short answerHOTS / competency
Why do you think Spiegelman chose comics, a form often seen as light entertainment, to tell such a serious story?
Hint
What can pictures do that words alone cannot?
Answer
Open answer. Points: he was a cartoonist, so it was his language; pictures show places and scenes directly; the animal metaphor could only work visually; the contrast between a 'light' form and a terrible subject shocks readers into attention; it reaches readers who might not read a history book.
Q7 · 3 marks · Short answerHOTS / competency
Choose any graphic novel or comic you know and explain how one visual technique (panel size, colour, lettering or symbol) adds meaning.
Hint
Name the work, the technique and the effect.
Answer
Open answer: names a work and a page or scene, identifies the technique, and explains clearly what it adds that words alone could not.
Test your recall
Answer in your head or on paper first, then open the card. Pulling an answer out of memory makes it stick far better than re-reading.
1.Who created Maus?Show answer
Art Spiegelman.
2.In which years were the two volumes published?Show answer
1986 and 1991.
3.Who is Vladek?Show answer
Art's father, a Polish Jewish survivor of Auschwitz.
4.Where does the frame story take place?Show answer
Rego Park, Queens, New York, in 1978-79.
5.What happened to Anja's diaries?Show answer
Vladek destroyed them after her death.
6.What is a caption in a graphic novel?Show answer
A box of narration, often giving the narrator's voice, time or place.
Quick revision checklist
The night before the exam: can you do each of these without looking?
- Can you name and explain five tools of the graphic-novel form?
- Can you outline Vladek's story from the 1930s to 1945?
- Can you explain the frame story and why it matters?
- Can you discuss the animal metaphor and its limits?
- Can you describe Art and Vladek's relationship?
Graphic Novels (Maus): frequently asked questions
Is Maus prescribed for ICSE Class 8?
No. CISCE suggests graphic novels such as Maus for Class VIII reading; schools choose their own books.
Is Maus suitable for 13-year-olds?
CISCE suggests it for Class VIII. It deals with the Holocaust honestly, including death and grief, so it is best read with discussion.
Are graphic novels 'real' literature?
Yes. Maus won a Pulitzer special award, and many graphic novels are studied in schools and universities.
What other graphic novels might a school choose?
CISCE's list for Classes VI and VII mentions the Tintin and Asterix series; schools may choose others suited to the age group.
Based on: CISCE Curriculum for Upper Primary Classes (VI-VIII), English Literature: Suggested Reading List (Classes VI-VIII); Wikipedia: Maus; Shmoop: Maus summary