Rating: 
Summary: Creative and informative
Review: This is certainly a very interesting piece of work. I struggle with trying to classify the book because it seems a combination of many types of literature. The layout is like that of a comic strip yet there's nothing humorous about the subject matter. Written like a novel but an actual life account. "Maus . . ." is the first illustrated book I've ever read and I find the use of cartoons actually enhanced the narrative. In "Maus . . ." the author steps outside himself to tell the story of his father's life during the Holocaust. The cartoons are an excellent way to reinforce the power differential among the characters. Spiegelman portrays the Nazis as cats, Jews as mice and non-Jew Poles as pigs. Through these character lenses, the author provides a very moving account of his father's experience while not risking the chance of loosing those who don't want to read a serious or depressing book (I find this one to be neither). The drawings were distracting enough to not overwhelm me with the horrors of the Holocaust yet interesting enough to keep me reading. This is a good read for all ages and should certainly go a long way in educating children on a significant aspect of world history. It's a short, fast read that delivers so much information for so little reading effort. A creative well executed effort on the part of Spiegelman and an enjoyable reading experience for the reader.
Rating: 
Summary: A Crazy College Student's Opinion
Review: Art Spiegelman's masterpiece Maus is a credit to one of the oldest form of story telling: cartoons. This gripping tale about the holocaust is done in a comic book style and Spiegelman has taken the ultimate risk by using this medium. He has taken a style traditionally seen as childish and lighthearted and has given it a new vision and dimension. What Spiegelman ultimately creates is a story that tells a tale of great tragedy and hope in a way that a reader has very little difficulty comprehending and empathizing. The basis of the story has ties with reality. The book is about the son, Art Spiegelman, coming to his father, Vladek Spiegelman, and asking him to relate his experiences of the Holocaust for a comic book he is planning to draw. In essence Art Spiegelman is making a comic book about making his comic book. Also, though the book is about the Holocaust there are several times when modern life breaks in. Throughout the story there are scenes that show how well Vladek is doing in the modern world and how he is coping with retirement, a new marriage, failing health and the suicide of his wife. Not only are we able to see the Holocaust through the eyes of a survivor, but also we can see how the experience has changed him in the present. However the bulk of his book is about Vladek's experiences in the Holocaust. Perhaps the most memorable part of this story is they way characters are physically portrayed. Art Spiegelman does not draw his father; he draws his character in the form of a mouse. Appropriately enough the Germans are cats and the Polish are pigs. Not only are the characters portrayed as differing identities; Art Spiegelman has given them extremely identifiable and unique racial distinctions. The struggle is no longer between men, but animals. Though seemingly mocking, this device helps a reader relate much better to the story. Imagining a man baking dozens of Jews in an oven is horrific, but a cat doing the same to mice is more tolerable and easier to accept. This does not lessen the impact however, as the mice depicted by Spiegelman scream in agony, beg for mercy and pound futility at the doors. Though they are just mice, Art Spiegelman has created them in such away that the reader feels sympathy and cannot help but to care for them. Art Spiegelman's masterpiece Maus is a credit to both the field of literature and art. He has seamlessly merged the simple storytelling of comic books with the unbelievable story of human triumph. He has given the reader characters that look absurd, yet feel real and allow us to understand, relate and empathize with them. Though the medium may cause some readers to look elsewhere, those able to see beyond the common perceptions of comic books will be rewarded with a work that is every bit as enjoyable and though provoking as any written work today.
Rating:
Summary: Easy & entertaining
Review: I recently read the book entitled Maus: A survivors tale; 1 My father bleeds history. It was a really good book. I especially liked how it was it was written like a comic book, so it was really easy to read and entertaining at the same time. My favorite part was when Artie's father, Vladek would stand up for himself, I liked it because it gave me a really good feeling inside myself, that sort of inspired me to do something constructive or that would help someone. In conclusion if I were you and had not read this book I would definitely go to my local library or neigh/borhood bookstore and borrow/buy this book because it is totally worth your time and money. So basically I am telling you to make sure you read this book!
Mik Green
Rating:
Summary: Very good, very touching, very worthwhile.
Review: I will admit I had to read this for a class I was taking about modern Jewish history. But I also chose to take said class and was very curious about the subject matter. Maus was the third and last biographical work that we read in class (Solomon Maimon's and Pauline Wengeroff's autobiographies being the others) and it was easily the most unique. When I told friends that I was reading a comic book about the Holocaust I received many strange looks. But there was always one response that made people understand: The author's father survived the Holocaust and he wanted to tell his father's story in the medium he knew best. Art Spiegelman puts unsurpassed passion into this work that ties his father and mother's struggles in wartime Poland as well as his own struggles with his geriatric father thirty years later. Told with a serious tone overlaid with characters where Jews are mice, Poles are pigs, Germans are cats, and the other nationalities are equally represented in animal form, Maus proved to be an extremely unique and endlessly fascinating and tragic biography. I have never been one for reading comic books, but Art Spiegelman's effort can do nothing less than elevate the respect anyone could have for the art form.
Rating:
Summary: Maus A Story Of The Holocaust
Review: "Maus: My Father Bleeds History" is a very interesting book. It is written in a way not many books are. The comic book outline is very unique. It is like a comic book within itself. The thing is that this is not a comical story. The story is about the Holocaust. Another interesting aspect about this story are the main characters. They are animals. The Jews are are mice, the Poles are the pigs, and the Germans are the cats.
Art Spieglman is the son of Vladek Spieglman, a Holocaust survivor. He is also a survivor in life. Art is a comic book artist who is writing about his father's life as a Jew in World World 2 Europe. Vladek's hardships and the mistreatment of the Jews are hard at times to read and the illustrations make the story feel much more real. The struggles of trying to survive, not knowing who is your friend or enemy, and the personal relationships between the characters, make this a memorable story.
This book is good for anyone who likes history and a personal story. I recommend this to anyone who doesn't want to do a lot of reading. The things people go through in extraordinary circumstances make you think what you might go through if you were faced with those same problems. Basically this book makes you think. Which is a good thing, because for me that means it's good.
On a scale of 1-5, I give this story a 4.5.
Rating:
Summary: Profound. . .and surprisingly entertaining
Review: MAUS surprised me. Before I read it, I expected I might admire and respect it as an important comic, but I figured the subject matter was altogether too heavy and serious to permit it to be in the least bit enjoyable. Boy, was I was wrong. MAUS is not only a an amazing use of the comic idiom-an affecting chronicle of what is surely THE most uncomical event in the 20th Century-it is also a gripping and psychologically astute portrait of a family tottering on the sizable wake of that event. Art Spiegelman has managed to create something equally important and entertaining with MAUS. If you've been scared away by the heaviness of the subject matter, don't let yourself be. It's heavy, for sure, but it's also a great bit of storytelling.
Rating:
Summary: Introducing the tragic tale of Vladek Spiegelman
Review: What got Art Spiegelman's "Maus: A Survivor's Tale" noticed was the simple and rather obvious conceit of telling a story about the Holocaust in which the Jews are portrayed as mice and the Nazis as cats. But the reason Spiegelman won the Pulitzer Prize is because ultimately the story being told is more important than the metaphor employed by the cartoonist. Vladek Spiegelman was a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Holocaust and "Maus" is about the attempt of his son, a cartoonist, to come to terms with not only his father in Rego Park, New York, but the terrible things that happened to his father in Poland in this first half of the tale, "My Father Bleeds History." This proves not to be rhetorical hyperbole, because Vladek's past becomes almost omnipresent as he tells his story to his son. Almost as important, the suicide of Artie's mother comes into play as well, for ultimately in this story, as in life, everything is related. Tragically, as Vladek reveals more of the events that irrevocably altered not only his own life but that of his son, Artie is repelled rather than drawn closer to his father and the gulf between then becomes clearer. Knowledge, which should bring insight and understanding, fails and creates only bitterness. However, you must remember this is but the first half of the story, which concludes in "And Here My Troubles Began." What makes "Maus" remarkable is not that it is a "comic book," what the "New York Times" called "an epic story told in tiny pictures," but that it is a very intimate story about someone who survived the Holocaust. The body might survive the concentration camp, but "Maus" is about what happens to the mind, the heart and the soul. I have been reading the concerns of those who are bothered by the portrayal of each ethnic group as a different animal, particular the decision to represent the Poles as pigs. The main oppositional pair here of the Jews and Nazis as mice and cats certainly can be seen as arguing that the Holocaust is another example of "cat and mouse" that has been played out between the strong and the weak throughout human history. No matter when the Holocaust stands on your own personal list of historical atrocities, clearly it is not as much of an aberration as we would like to think. With regards to the Poles being pigs in Spiegelman's schema, my understanding is that "swine" was an epithet used by Germans to all races, since all non-Aryans were, by definition, sub-human. But Spiegelman also shows the French as frogs and a gypsy is a moth (in "Maus II"), which seems to indicate he is taking advantage of existing conventions. Obviously the selection of some animals has inherent symbolism: the dogs/Americans are the ones who beat the cats/Nazis. Then again, in practical terms, what other animal, easily recognizable, could the Poles be in this iconography? Still, an interesting question to debate with valid points on both sides of the issue.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful comic book!
Review: This book is one that caught me in its clutches instantly! For those who are interested in the Holocaust and are sick of stories of Anne Frank(no offense), this is perfect! Summary: The author of this book, Art Speigelman, goes to visit his father, Vladek, and learn of his story of living in Hitler's Europe. Art also tries to understand his father's changes that have happened due to his experiences. Art's stepmother, Mala, complains that Vladek is too uptight and doesn't care about her. Vladek complains that all Mala cares about is his money. Art's struggles show how even the children of the survivors have to survive. Review: This book took me away. For a story of the Holocaust, this hits a home run. Never before have I read a book like this. A tale like this deserves to be read by everyone.
Rating: 
Summary: An interesting way of looking at a much-written about topic
Review: This first book tells us the story of Art's parents, how they met, and how their lives changed as Hitler took over Europe. The story moves back and forth from Art's father's life in WWII Poland to 1980s New York. I felt that the drawings showing depictions of different races as animals put such a different spin on the Holocaust. Plus, when you think that the Nazis treated the Jews at "less than human" it seems to make sense on more than one level. I was eager to start the next book, for this book ends with Art's father arrives at Auschwitz.
Rating:
Summary: surprisingly engaging
Review: Summary:
Art (Artie) Spiegelman is a cartoonist and the son of holocaust survivors, Vladek and Anna Spiegelman. Despite a rocky relationship with his parents (resulting in years of therapy), Art eventually makes the decision to tell his parents' story in graphic novel (comic book) form. (I'm including what would generally be considered background information because it is actually included in the novel.) Art's mother, Anna, committed suicide, and now he has only the recollections of his wealthy but super-frugal father upon which to base the story. Through repeated visits, Art gets his father to recount his World War II experience. Vladek's begins with his pre-war life, which barely pre-dates his meeting Anna. Once Vladek meets Anna and they marry, Vladek is quickly taken in by Anna's parents who help him set up a factory near where they live (in Poland). But the War is rapidly approaching and Vladek is drafted into the Polish military, which quickly fell. He was then a prisoner of war for a number of months before returning to his family. The family is then torn apart as they move from ghetto to ghetto, doing their best to stay alive, in large part due to Vladek's resourcefulness. Vladek and Anna even send their firstborn son to live with relatives as they think he will be safer. As it turns out, the son dies, but he probably would have with them as well. Despite doing their best to avoid it, eventually Vladek and Anna end up in Auschwitz, but that is covered in the second book: Maus II. My Comments:
I wasn't expecting to find this book as engaging as I did, though I'm not sure why. Eventually, I was drawn into the book and was disappointed when it ended just as the Spiegelman's are sent to Auschwitz. Initially, I was distracted by the approach of the book as it bounces back and forth between the author interacting with his father as he is interviewing him (quasi present day) and the father's account of his experience during the war (~30 years prior). But it quickly becomes clear that this is included for a reason - to illustrate what the father has become (likely in large part due to the experience he is recounting). I was also surprised by the author's willingness to reveal so much about himself. Rather than present himself as 'the good son', he is quite critical of himself. His character in the book is constantly complaining about his father and even goes so far as to call him a murderer when he discovers that Vladek burned Anna's journals from just after the war. Keep in mind this book is only the first 1/2 of the story. Without reading the second book the story wouldn't be complete. Thus, while this book is interesting, it is really just setting the foundation of what becomes a compelling love story between two survivors and their son's attempt to deal with his parents and childhood. I think this book could serve well as an introduction to the holocaust for young readers as it combines an actual account with thoughts, comments, and pictures. Of course, additional books should be used to supplement this one, but it would make a good primer. And, for those that have read quite a bit about the holocaust it still is a powerful tale about what it took to survive (luck and an insurmountable desire to love and live).
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