Author Art Spiegelman told CNN Thursday -- coincidentally International Holocaust Remembrance Day -- that the ban of his book for crude language was "myopic" and represents a "bigger and stupider" problem than any with his specific work.

The ban, decided by the McMinn County Board of Education in eastern Tennessee on January 10, sparked a national uproar among advocates of literary freedom after it became widely known in the past few days.

It was the most recent controversy over conservatives seeking to purge school libraries of books they find objectionable, with the focus on works that offer alternatives to traditional views of US history and culture, particularly from the viewpoints of African Americans, LGBTQ youths, and other minorities.

Maus was highly acclaimed when it was published as a compilation of Spiegelman's serialized tale of the experiences of his father, a Polish Jew, with the Nazis and in a concentration camp during the Holocaust.

The book, which depicted characters in the story as animals -- Jews are mice and Germans are cats -- won a Pulitzer Prize and other awards, and was accepted in many secondary schools as a powerful and accurate depiction of the Nazi murder of millions of Jews during World War II.

The ban by the McMinn County school authority though focused on the use of eight crude words like "damn" and "bitch" and one scene of nudity, which some parents said were inappropriate for schoolchildren.

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