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Summary: Teachers Unite! This book will hook your students!
Review: As a high school English teacher, I am constantly looking for new ways to reach reluctant readers. MAUS is just the book to do this and to introduce the Holocaust. Its easy to read prose is helped by the even more fascinating pictures that entice the reader to read on. The secondary theme of a strained father-son relationship appeals to teenagers as well. Three of my students are collaborating on a graphic novel about the Korean War--inspired, as I'm sure you will be too, by Spiegelman's gift of story-telling.
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Summary: This book was the BOMB!!!
Review: Art Spiegelman has created a wonderful and very easy to read Holocaust tale. Since the book was mostly in pictures, it was easy for me to catch on the novel quicker. This book is a basis of hope.
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Summary: A powerful portrayal of the Holocaust.
Review: I just read this book and then got on-line to order the sequel! This book is unique and gritty in its reality.
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Summary: this is a vivid tale of survival that is worth reading
Review: This story is a basis of hope. It goes through the history of a young artist's father and mother. He learns about what they had to go through and realizes that his story must be told. Art was definately right to draw out the story!
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Summary: A very well done book
Review: Art Speigelman has created an wonderful Holocaust tale. This was a very quick read, since the majority of the book was pictures. The most wonderful and incredibly crafty part about this book was the way Speigelman dipicted Jews as mice, Nazis/Germans as cats and the Poles as pigs. It was interesting how Art also wove his conversations with his father as he interviewed him about his Holocaust experinces. My only critisizm is that sometimes a comic strip of the 1940's was right next to a comic strip of the 1990's, and it's not always obvious that we're no long sitting in the Holocaust, but with Art and his father in the present day. Also, Maus is not the most moving of Holocaust books and can at some times be boring. If you are expecting the pictures to make it feel like you're really there, it won't.
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Summary: This book is so interesting!!!!!
Review: This book is the best I have ever read in my whole life-time. I'm only 12 and I still got a lot out of it. I love books, but this is definatly my favorite!! It's so easy to understand, since it's in comic book form. It was both sad and happy. It only took me one day for me to read it since it was a real page-turner. You kind of get sucked into the reality of the book. Even though it's written as a comic book, and even though the charcters are mice, cats and pigs (which I thought was neat and clever), this book gives you a lot of information about the Holocaust.
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Summary: sitt'n on a hammock eatin snow balls
Review: This comic book is perhaps one of the best every written. If you are a fan of auto-bio and real-world comics, this is as good as they come. Despite the fact that it has some narative inconsistencies (at some points speigelman slips into the self-referncial formalism that marked his previous works)it is a pleasure to read. Well, a pleasure to have read due to some graphic content. NOT FOR KIDS
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Summary: Easy to read, yet unbelievable
Review: I read both Maus I and II in class during my sophmore year in high school. I have to admit that it was easy to follow (since it was written in a comic strip), humorous, and entertaining. However, there were many parts in these two books that were very unbelievable. For example, both Vladek and his wife would always find a way to make life easier for them. They just give their leaders food or good boots and their leaders would start treating them special and becam more friendly with them. They also seem to have so much money and jewelry saved. Where did they keep getting all this? Weren't all their properties and possesions taken away before they were sent to camps? I'm sure that they were carefully searched so I'm still puzzled about how they managed to keep all this money and jewelry. Another unbelievable scene is I think in Maus II when Vladek was in a train to be sent to another camp. He managed to save himself from a packed train by taking a blanket and making a little hammock for him to sit on. He managed to sit himself above the deadly and violent crowd of other Jews and eat snow he found on the roof of the train. I think that if he really did that, mobs of people would attack him to take his place. They wouldn't just let one person sit comfortably above them eating snow while they were all crowded below him suffering and in pain, some even dying. Some parts are hust so unrealistic that it made me doubtful to believe if the other scebes with Artie's parents were true. I'm not doubting the fact that there was a Holoucast and milloins of people were torture, imprisoned, and killed, but I am not sure if everything that supposedly happened to Arties parents were true or were just added to simply make the story more exciting. Overall, it was a good book. Spiegelman's symbolism showed his feelings towards the way people were viewed during and how people acted during that time. The Jews (Mice) were helpless and unwanted. They were thought to be disease carying animals. The Nazis (Cats) were considered more superior to the Mice and were able to easily manipulate them. They were mean and selfish. The Poles (Pigs)were tricky, sly, and would often turn Jews in in this story. Their traits and the way they were viewed were portrayed as animal traits and people were symbolized as animals. That is all I have to say about this book.
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Summary: Raw, Painful and Personal.
Review: This is a powerful work. The tale of a young man's painful relationship with his father is elegantly interwoven with the father's recollection of life as a Jew in Nazi-occupied Poland. Spiegelman's skill and honesty make this a raw, gut-wrenching read, though the tale is somehow ultimately uplifting.I first read this book as a teenager, and would highly recommend it to people of any age. Over the years, I have re-read it frequently and shared it with friends of all ages. All have taken much from Spiegelman's tale. A few notes must be made in response to the 10/26/97 comment posted below by a reviewer from Ontario, Canada. It is quite clear that this reviewer did not, in fact, read the book. (S)he mistakenly attacks Spiegelman for portraying the Poles as rats, and wonders if he would be offended if a book were written portraying Jews as rats. Anyone who took the time to read Maus (or merely to examine it's cover!) would know that it is, in fact, the Jewish people who are portrayed as mice/rats, whereas the Poles are portrayed not as vermin, but rather as pigs. In fact, far from a "vicious" attack against Poles, there are many acts of kindness by Polish people portrayed in the book. Certainly there is unkindness as well, but how can the reviewer forget that this is a factual account of Vladek Spiegelman's life, told from his perspective. If unkind acts by Polish people are a part of that life, then they should be in the book. Finally, the reviewer in question inelegantly raises a point of some merit, though it is one that is only tangentially related to Spiegelman's work. The Polish people did, in fact, suffer horribly at the hands of both Nazis and Soviets alike. Their death toll in the concentration camps numbered in the millions, and should never be forgotten or omitted when discussing the Holocaust. This book, however, is about Vladek Spiegelman, and so surely it cannot be assailed for its focus on events from his perspective. Spiegelman's fidelity to his father's! story is to be admired, not attacked. And certainly not by a reviewer who could not be bothered to read the book.
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Summary: A one-of-a-kind classic.
Review: Spiegelman creates his own art form with this book. It is a wonderful, compelling narrative, an insightful, touching character study, and a history lesson all in one. It is also a brutally honest,brilliant synthesis of pathos and humor. If you read Maus 1, I give 10:1, you will read the sequel.
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