I do not typically read graphic novels, and while it was a dark and strange experience, it worked well for the story. I made the mistake of not getting the full two-volumes and I did not like where this story ended... ( )

A sad book, sadder than betrayal than turning on those you love: but in those times whom you loved was survival ( )

I thought this was well done. I've read a lot about the holocaust both fictional accounts and non-fiction and I wasn't expecting much with a graphic novel. But the author captured the traumatised old Jewish man retelling his experiences to his son. I thought being a graphic novel, I'd be able to skim but it sucked me in deeply to the story and I found myself rereading passages and pages and holding the Spiegelman family's story in my prayers. ( )

This was, possibly, the first graphic novel I've ever read... now on to part II.
I agree with things I've read about this work of art, that it's extremely personal, challenging, and historically accurate.

Could one of my conservative friends explain to me why this has been a 'challenged' book in the United States, to be removed from high school reading lists? ( )

One of the handful of comics that transcend the medium. The now trite 'graphic novel' used to be the dividing line between the ones that were really trying and the vast majority that weren't, now it doesn't seem to mean much at all.
Despite the cartoony style (or perhaps because of it, like other famous nightmare fuels for kids; Watership Down, Plague Dogs), the story packs a punch and manages to convey horror and desperation without ever getting that graphic or gruesome, all thanks to a good use of the visual medium and a great sense of storytelling. ( )

Based on the life of Art Spiegelman's father who was a concentration camp survivor. Art Spiegelman depicts himself interviewing his father from a period of 1980 to 1991. All that his father tells him about life as a Jew in the concentration camps, life after the ordeal, and even his father's current mental state (until his death) is depicted in the book.

What strikes you first about Maus is the cover. You wonder, why "Maus"? You open the book and you see the significance of the word. Spiegelman uses his artistic license to depict all the humans in his story as anthropomorphs. All the Jews (such as Spiegelman) are depicted as mice (maus = mouse in German), the Germans fittingly are drawn as cats. Poles are pigs, Americans are dogs. So there is never any confusion in your head about what which citizen you are seeing. The story brilliantly moves between two time-frames, the present and the WW II time. The horrors are almost faithfully depicted. In fact, there is one panel shown where a German soldier is shown throwing a Jewish child against a wall to stop its crying, and I can't get that image out of my head. Spiegelman also shows many of the negative traits of his father, and wonders in one of the panels if he wasn't stereotyping Jews by showing his father to be a stingy opportunist. You can feel his inner conflicts as he tried to show his father's life without being demeaning.

Maus was initially published in two parts, but a combined version of the two books is available as "The Complete Maus". I liked Maus I much better than Maus II, but both are excellent. In 1992, it became the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize (special citation). If you read it, you'll know that it was a deserved win.

Rating for Maus I: 4.5/5


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Join me on the Facebook group, "Readers Forever!", for more reviews and other book-related discussions and fun. ( )

Using a "comic book" to tell the story of the Holocaust was a risk back in the day but Spiegelman tells a chilling story which does nothing to dampen or dismiss the horrors of the Holocaust. Depicting everyone as animals - the Jews are mice, the Nazis are cats, the Americans are dogs, the Poles are pigs, etc. - is a clever choice in characterization. The story is being told to Art by his father, so the text does jump back and forth in time. Maus II is a necessary companion to this book. ( )

Summary: Volume one of a graphic novel rendering the tightening control over Polish Jews, portrayed as mice, which ends at the gates of Auschwitz.

Art Spiegelman’s Maus is one of the pioneering works of graphic literature. It has been celebrated with a Pulitzer Prize (1992) and banned in at least one Tennessee school district as well as in Russia, and subject to a book burning in Poland. The Tennessee board banned its use in an eighth grade class for an image of Jews who were hung, an image of Vladek’s wife in a bathtub (no private parts are visible), and a few instances of profanity (probably far less than could be heard in an eighth grade locker room).

It is a story within a story. It is the true story of Anja and Vladek Spiegelman, Polish Jews subject to increasing anti-Semitism in a confined ghetto while friends and relatives are transported to Auschwitz. And it is the story of the author’s interviews with his father in the late 1970’s, re-telling the experience. In this graphic history, the Jews are portrayed as mice, and the Germans as cats and Gentile Poles as pigs.

Vladek Spiegelman was an enterprising young man who built a textile business with the help of his wife’s family. During an affair, he meets Anja, leaves the other woman and marries. They have a child. Then the Germans invade. Vladek loses his business. The noose begins to tighten. He has to register as a Jew. People are forced into a ghetto, into shared quarters with other families. Food becomes scarce, only available on the black market. The hanging portrays those buying food on the black market.

Then the transports begin. Germans separate the Jews into those who do essential work and others who are never heard from again. Jews make efforts to smuggle their children to safer places. Anja and Vladek do this with Richieu, their son. Later, an aunt poisons Richieu to prevent the Germans from taking him.

They realize that the Germans are trying to eliminate all Jews. Spiegelman describes the hiding places they use–rooms behind coal cellars, rooms behind false walls in attics. But one mistake can lead to arrest and capture. Anja, portrayed as nervous, wants to stay. But Vladek hears of smugglers who can get them out for a price. They leave but are betrayed and arrested. Volume I of Maus ends here.

During the interviews with his father, we learn Anja survived the camp, gave birth to Art, but was marked for life with what we would call PTSD. In a tense scene, Vladek comes across an earlier comic Art had drawn, Prisoner on the Hell Planet. In it, Art tells the story of Anja’s suicide in 1968. He spent three months in a mental hospital, which he portrays as a prison. His father destroyed diaries that would have helped Art in his research.

Part of the story is one of Art and his father groping toward reconciliation, understanding how the Holocaust had marked each of their lives. Spiegelman also vividly portrays his father’s memory. As the subtitle states, he bleeds history. It just comes out of him. And the story Spiegelman tells of one family’s struggle, tells the story of many others. He vividly shows the brutality of the Germans. He chronicles the increasingly desperate conditions, the ingenious ways Jews sought to elude capture, and the heart-breaking betrayals. And all the while, there is this spark, call it hope or delusion, that they will escape the worst.

The graphic history approach couples narrative and visual in a way that removes the Holocaust from the realm of the abstract. Holocaust survivors are dwindling in number. At one time, they visited school classrooms. Maus is another means by which a Holocaust survivor can visit a classroom. This is history we cannot forget. That does not stop people from trying, whether in Russia or Poland or Tennessee. Antisemitism is on the rise. We can repeat this terrible history. Spiegelman’s graphic history is one way to say “always remember” and ‘never again.” But will we? ( )

Pulitzer Prize Special Citations and Awards

This book is good for students at an advanced level. It tells the story of someone who went through the Holocaust and shows how people survived during that time in history. People from different countries are represented as various animals. For example, Jews are portrayed as mice, and Nazis are portrayed as predatory cats. I would introduce this book to my classroom as a read-aloud to guide and help my students through the important themes and contexts throughout this story. ( )

This book tells the story of a holocaust survivor through the form of a graphic novel. The art represents Jews as mice and the Nazis as cats. The story goes through all the things that the authors father had to do to survive and everything his family went through and all the people they lost. I would use this book in an 8th grade classroom or older because of the more serious themes in it and there is a slight amount of language. (159 pages)

This is a great look into Nazi-occupied Poland in the '30s and '40s. It's also a touching story of an adult son trying to get closer to his father.

I'll be honest, I picked this up because it was on the "banned books" table. I don't think we should limit what people can write or read. I struggle to see what should be banned about this book. It's a historically accurate depiction of an individual's life going through a horrible time in recent history. ( )

MAUS I surprised me. Even though I thought I knew pieces and portions about the Holocaust quite well, this is different. MAUS I is an auto- and biography that covered the past of his parents and the present of their relationship. The author and illustrator, Art Spiegelman, drew himself, his wife, Françoise Mouly, his dad Vladek, and his dad’s second wife, Mala, into the book. The chaotic interviews and hostility-filled interactions are included. Art’s mom, Anya, committed suicide when he was 20, leaving behind the grief-stricken Vladek. The generational trauma affected not just his parents but also placed demands and expectations on Art. Especially after Anya’s death, father and son became estranged, miraculously coming together for these interviews.

Book I also surprised me that Vladek (and Anya) Spiegelman went multiple rounds from being drafted in Poland, caught and became prisoner of war, released, reunited with Anya and extended family, hiding, escaping, and more, before finally being caught and sent to Auschwitz. Book I doesn’t even include the Auschwitz portion yet, and it was incredibly powerful. I was floored by all their efforts to evade capture.

MAUS is the first and, thus far, only graphic novel to have won the Pulitzer Prize.

MAUS became famous in recent years as a banned book. Naturally, I read MAUS because of that. Thank you to the idiots who banned it and inspired me to read an excellent book!

A note to parents: Even though Art Spiegelman used mice to depict Jews, cats to depict Germans, and pigs to depict Poles, the hostility, fear, and violence are obvious. Art also included the pages of his short graphic strip that addressed his mother’s suicide, including himself in a prisoner’s striped outfit, since he had left the state mental hospital just months before and was living at home. This portion is blunt and graphic with his mother found naked in the bathroom in a pool of blood. This portion is in human figures. ( )

I'd heard of Maus before, of course -- it's one of the most famous non-fiction graphic novels -- but I hadn't gotten around to reading it until I saw it in a "banned books" display at my local bookstore and picked up a copy.

It's interesting that the "framing device" of Vladek telling Art the story is very present -- the story is always told via his narration, and there are lots of scenes in the present day where we see his strained relationships with his remaining family.

The art choice (Jews are drawn as mice, Nazis as cats, Poles and Germans as pigs) sounds like it should be weird, but it's effective. I particularly like how when Vladek is trying to pass as a non-Jewish person, he's drawn wearing a pig mask. ( )

Being the rebel that I am, I had to read this because it was put on the banned list. I cannot fathom how anyone would have a problem with a child reading this unless they do not want them to know about history. ( )

Heartbreaking , but couldn’t put it down. ( )

The story of Polish Jew Vladek Spiegelman, as told to his son, is not an easy one. In this 1st volume of 2, we're shown in images what Vladek's life was in the time leading up to and in the early days of the Nazis' suppression of Jews in Poland. In tandem, Art shows his research process with his father, as he tries to interview him about his past and get along with him at the same time. The 1st volume takes Vladek right up to the gates of Auschwitz, and takes Art to the brink of despair with his tormented father.

The horrific things that happened during the time leading up to the Holocaust (and some of the beginning) is difficult enough to read about, but to see it in this format can make it even more difficult. Spiegelman doesn't pull any punches in his father's account or his own. It's a depressing story, yet I've always appreciated reading about the amazing ingenuity of survivors of the Holocaust. Even while we see the depths of human depravity, we also see a shining light as those who are basically safe (the Germans may not have been rounding up the average Polish citizen, but they weren't exactly making life easy on them either) risk their own safety to help those who are being persecuted.

I've always been fascinated by stories like this, preferring real accounts to fictional ones, and it's difficult not to imagine myself in that situation. While the characters in this book are depicted as animals, in a way, this adds another layer to the realism while also making it a little more palatable (though just a little). I would recommend this to be read by anyone interested in this part of history, even if you don't normally read graphic novels. I don't either, but this book, and it's follow-up, have captivated me for years. ( )

This is why it is crucial to take comics seriously! I’ve always been a fan of comic work, and I love manga, but this is so good! A piece of art as well as being a nonfictional historical account of the war. ( )

Don't get this book without also having the sequel to hand, as they follow on and I was totally invested in this by the end and desperate to read more. ( )

I'm not sure how to begin my review for this book. This is probably going to end up being a giant jumbled mess of my thoughts, but here we go...

I know this book was published in the 80s, but I didn't know about it until a few weeks ago. I didn't read this book in school, and was made aware of it by social media. Initially, I was under the impression it was a novel, so imagine my surprise when it arrived and my boyfriend said to me, "you know that's a comic book, right?"

To put as a kind-of disclaimer, I am not the biggest comic or graphic novel reader. I have a very imaginative mind and prefer letting the words create images in my own head, hence why I would rather enjoy the book than its movie or show adaptation, too. So perhaps this is one of the reasons why this book didn't entirely resonate with me, but at the same time I couldn't help but think that a comic book was a rather unconventional way of retelling a story with such gravity as this one. I will admit that yes, since this book's main audience is for middle grade and above, the unconventionalness of a comic book does work in its favour. It even says in the later parts of the comic that Artie's dad is interested in reading this comic despite it being his own story and him never having had an interest in comics.

So... I do agree that the comic-style does bring a pull of attention to this book, which is very important because stories like this should be told to everyone, everywhere, so that history never repeats itself. But... I don't know. I personally just felt like reading such a heavy topic and personal experience in this style was strange, and not in the best way. It's really hard to put my thoughts and feelings about this book in words, but to try my best, it just felt... ingenuine to a degree, to mold this story into simple pictures and condensed words. But again, that's just me, and perhaps my preference to novels is a part of the reason I feel this way.

Another thing I noticed was the strain and tension between Artie and his father. Their relationship is, to say the least, quite bizarre. Throughout the entire book, I kept thinking "why is Artie being so pushy and insensitive towards his father, when this must be such a difficult topic to talk about?" and kept pushing away my own thoughts with the justification that "perhaps it's because this is a comic and words have to be somewhat condensed so that it doesn't drag on and on and on"... but that still didn't sit entirely right with me.

There are also multiple instances in the book where he'd be frustrated with his father for being "frugal", which was wild to me because he knew very well what kind of life his father went through. I can understand the frustration to a degree, as my family can be like this as well (my father's side comes from poverty), but the complete lack of understanding from Artie was alarming. Oh, and I don't even know how to summarise my thoughts about the comic regarding his mother's suicide...

Moving on, I don't know what my thoughts are on the racism portrayed in this book. Quite frankly, I don't think I have enough knowledge on this subject matter to properly discuss it, and I do not want to be insensitive or insulting towards anyone (or group of people). All I will say is, I have seen some reviews discussing how the portrayal of different groups of people being portrayed as animals (Germans = cats, Jews = mice, Polish = pigs) is a result of Artie (or his father's) racism. Personally, I thought it was just a way for the author to portray the division between the groups of people at the time in a way that would be simple enough for middle grade readers to understand. But then I thought about how, since society tends to view pigs (the animals) in a negative light, wouldn't these kids grow up to view the Polish people in a negative light as well..? And then I started going down a spiral of my own thoughts because I didn't know what to make of it all.

I feel like up until now I said some not-so-positive things about this book, but overall I did not dislike the premise of it. I think it's very important to keep educating the humankind of historical events and bring awareness to real stories that real people experienced, because the best thing we can do is keep learning and stay aware. It was also very educational to learn about the different ways that Vladek and his family had to utilise their resources to survive.

I plan on reading the second book to further educate myself, because I have made it a goal in 2023 to read more historical nonfiction books to widen my knowledge of the past.

Anywho, I decided to give this book a 3 star rating because I honestly did not know how to rate this book using just stars. The only reason I decided on 3 is because that, to me, feels like a neutral middleground, and I feel very neutral (albeit heavily conflicted) about this book. Who knew a comic could make me feel this kind of way?! Not me. This was a very new experience.

I hope I didn't offend anyone with my review, it is not my intention to do so, and if you have any thoughts on my opinions or think you could help me resolve my confusions, please let me know! ( )

Clearly I've been bingeing on graphic novels lately. This is one of the best. How do you make sense of the insensible? Spiegelman presents us with a way forward, by presenting the vortex of the Holocaust through the matter-of-fact eyes of his father, a man who bears its emotional scars but stubbornly persists. There is something holy and true about this novel, which stands with Elie Wiesel's Night as the best Holocaust memoirs I have read. ( )

Another graphic novel to be read for school. When I picked it up at work, I had Justin and Maria both raving about how much they loved this one. How there were moments of humor as respites for the harsh subject material.

Seeing WWII depicted in a graphic novel is being done more and more (my favorite is George Takai's "They Called Us Enemy"). However, this was the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer! Talk about an accomplishment--especially in the 1980's where graphic novels were not as common of a medium.

Reading Spiegelman's tale of his father's life in Poland was intriguing. Book 2, I feel like, will have more of the internment camp focus but still being a Jewish Pole in the 1930's (as Hitler was coming to power and invading.....) these are stories that need to always be told!! ( )

I knew this would be a devastating read, but ugh. This really has well-earned the acclaim it has gotten over the years. There are really two parallel stories here: Art speaking with his cranky father in the "present," and the story his father tells of World War II and the horrors of the holocaust. This book is just part one and really acts as a horrific lead-up to the concentration camp reality (that's not a spoiler, as that path is made clear early on). The art is effective in its crudeness, the dialogue ringing with painful authenticity. It's a good book, yet also terrible in the truths it lays bare. ( )

Art Spiegelman tells the story of his father’s time during WWII in the first of two volumes. Through startlingly raw story-telling, Art does not hesitate to bring to light the realities of one of the darkest times in human history. He does not shy away from the brutality of the war, the death, the despair, and the hopelessness. While it is difficult to read at times, particularly when discussing the brutality against children, it is a story that needs to be told if we as a society are to learn from the mistakes of the past and not repeat them. Considering the current political climate, this book is incredibly important for young adults as it does not censor the truth while treating it with the respect and dignity it deserves. Readers should check content warnings before reading as there are descriptions of child abuse, murder, discrimination, religious persecution, and more. ( )

Powerful graphic novel of surviving Nazi occupation of Poland. The author compiles his father’s experiences during the 1940’s from interviews with him. This isn’t a genre I read often but the depiction of people as different animals was interesting. Last book of 2022… ( )