The Tenessee school board that recently banned cartoonist Art Spiegelman's graphic novel, Maus, from its curriculum issued a statement in defense of the book's removal.This statement comes after the McMinn County School board voted to ban the graphic novel from its district, with the board stating that the role of an "elected board of education is to reflect the values of the community it serves." In the statement, the Tennessee school board noted the book's "unnecessary use of profanity and nudity and its depiction of violence and suicide" as the reason for its removal. "Taken as a whole, the Board felt this work was simply too adult-oriented for use in our schools," the statement read.

"We do not diminish the value of Maus as an impactful and meaningful piece of literature, nor do we dispute the importance of teaching our children the historical and moral lessons and realities of the Holocaust," the statement continued. "To the contrary, we have asked our administrators to find other works that  accomplish the same educational goals in a more age-appropriate fashion."

The statement continued, "The atrocities of the Holocaust were shameful beyond description, and we all have an obligation to ensure that younger generations learn of its horrors to ensure that such an event is never repeated. We simply do not believe that this work is an appropriate text for our students to study."

The McMinn County School board recently banned the Pulitzer-Prize-winning graphic novel from all of its schools in a unanimous 10-0 vote, just a day prior to International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27. Before the outright ban of the novel, the school board apparently discussed possibly redacting the "inappropriate" words and images from the text. According to the board, the fact that Maus is about the Holocaust did not factor into the ban.

Spiegelman's Maus was originally serialized in Raw between 1980 and 1991, and has been classified as a mix of genres, from memoir and biography to history and fiction. The story follows the cartoonist, born shortly after the end of World War II, as he interviews his father about his experiences as a Polish Jew and a Holocaust survivor. The book -- which was split into two volumes, Maus I and Maus II -- is known for its postmodernist techniques, routinely jumping from the past to the present, and famously represents Jews as mice and Germans as cats.

Spiegelman described the school board as "Orwellian" when addressing the ban of his graphic novel. "I'm kind of baffled by this," Spiegelman said. "It's leaving me with my jaw open, like, 'What?'"

Source: McMinn County Schools, via Twitter