I recently read two very powerful graphic novels that coincidentally were both about WWII. I was aware the first one was about the Holocaust, but it wasn’t until I picked up the second that I realized it was about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Back when I was a teacher, I taught gifted and talented kids, and one of our semester-long curriculums was about the 1940s. Not just about the war, but the entire decade. Two of our books that I taught were MAUS II and Hiroshima, both excellent books. Maus II is a graphic novel telling the story of the father of artist Art Spiegelman, who has taken his father’s survival during the Holocaust and turned it into a graphic novel. The Jews are depicted as mice, the Germans are cats, French are frogs, etc. The book is beautifully illustrated with haunting depictions of life in Auschwitz. I’ve always meant to read the first MAUS book, but reading them out of order doesn’t lead to any confusion. The first book tells of Spiegelman’s father’s early life, how he met Art’s mother, the birth of their baby, the beginning of the German’s deportation of Jews, etc. Although it is equally important as MAUS II, it isn’t as graphic. That said I taught MAUS II to middle school kids, and some were really bothered by it, but it’s a very powerful book that needs to be used in schools. Of all the books we read, this one was the one that haunted the kids most.
The other book I taught, Hiroshima, was equally as powerful, but from a very different standpoint. Written by a journalist, John Hersey, it is told from a third person perspective of what life was like immediately before, during, and after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. The book follows a handful of people through the event. It is at times very graphic and hard to read, but expertly written and an important piece of journalism. When I picked up Pika-Don yesterday, I truly had no idea what the subject matter was. This quick read follows the story of Tsutomu Yamaguchi, a man who survived not one, but BOTH atomic bombs dropped during WWII. This book was put together by the Stanford Graphic Novel Project, has several contributors, and is an excellent, beautifully drawn graphic novel. If you can get your hands on it, I absolutely recommend it.
Pleasant Nights 