Rating: 
Summary: Powerful and moving
Review: The Holocaust is a difficult event to comprehend, even more so with the passage of time. How ironic that a comic ("graphic novel" if you wish) so eloquently and powerfully details the horrors and long-term effects of that tragic time. Spiegelman won a Pulitzer Prize for this work, and it is certainly deserved. I was deeply moved by his and his father's (Vladek's) story.The plot line is simple - how a Polish Jew managed to survive the first years of the war from the Nazi invasion to Spiegelman's s deportation to Auschwitz in 1944. Yet his survival was anything but simple. The story is riveting, and honestly I am amazed how anyone managed to endure and survive those cruel years. Yet the way the story is presented amplifies the impact of the Holocaust. Cartoons are so simple and innocent. Here they describe and detail the barbarism, brutality and sheer evil of the "Final Solution."
The drawings, too have a double meaning. The Jews are mice - helpless when rounded up by the predatory Nazi cats. The Poles are pigs (fitting, given generations of Polish anti-semitism), Americans are dogs (as in "dog-face.") It makes the story accessable, even a little easier to comprehend. (We can all understand "cat - and mouse" - indeed, this is exactly how Vladek Spiegelman managed to survive.) Easy to read, very accessable to all ages, and equally powerful.
Rating: 
Summary: My reflection
Review: I really enjoyed this book.The art in the books makes the story easier to understand and it provides shows you exactly what the author is trying to express. This in depth story about the Holocaust really helps you understand exactly how the Jews were treated. I highly recommended this book.It will definitely teach you a lesson.
Rating:
Summary: Maus
Review: Maus
Spiegelman
T. Chung
Period 6 Artie Spiegelman is writing about his father, Vladek Spiegelman, of how he survived in World War 2. Vladek's story start when he meets his wife Anja. She is rich and very lovable woman with a pure soul. They live happily with each other; however, when the Germans starts attacking, their peace ends. Vladek and Anja hides in bunkers, and Vladek's intellegence ables them to survive the war. When the war is finally over, Vladek and Anja couldn't live happily with all the experiences, and the death of their family and son.
One of the part I liked was when Mala shows the comic strip made by Artie long time ago, about Anja's suicide. It shows how painful it was when his mother died, and how his father has fallen apart. Artie also says that "[his] release from the state mental hospital "(102), showing that he had many problems too. It was some way weird too, when Vladek started to recite The Tibetan Book of the Dead.
I also liked the part where Anja and Vladek got together again. Anja tells a story that she went to a gypsy to know her future for atleast a little hope. When she went to the gypsy, she was told that "[Vladek]'s coming home! [Anja]'ll get a sign that he's alive by the time the moon is full"(293). Anja waits until the day of the full moon, and a sign really came! Vladek sent a picture of himself and a letter. This was a happy ending, kind of like a fairy tale, and I liked it.
My favorite part of the book is how Artie told a long, touching story into a comic book. It would have took him a very long time to write this, and it would have been hard for him to write such personal things in a book, where everything goes into public. The story was definitely believable, and I enjoyed it very much.
Rating:
Summary: Maus
Review: Title: Maus
By: Art Spiegelman
Reviewed by: L. Kim
Period: 1 The book Maus is a true story about Jews who survived in the World War II. The author's father Vladek, a Jew, and his family had to suffer a lot. Art actually has an older brother, but he died when he was with his relative. Later when Art's parents were running away to Hungary, the Germans caught them and sent them to Auschwitz, a place with all the gas chambers. Fortunately, they were very lucky and survived from all the torture. Their family members were discriminated for being a Jew and life wasn't so easy for them. When the Americans came to fight the Nazis, all of the prisoners were now saved. They were very happy and Vladek was now able to be back together with his family. There were many things I liked about the book, nothing was bad. This book thaught me history and it was a comic book. That made it more fun for me to read. Unlike most of the books I've read in the past, it was a true story. I felt really sad while reading this book, also sorry. It was a wonderful book. My favorite part of this book was when Vladek was going to the market with Art and his girl friend to return an opened box of cereal. It was very funny and it reminded me of how people became so cheap(no offense) after the suffering during the war. Art and his girl friend were both very embarrassed. Vladek still got it returned though. Maus is just great.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful
Review: I guess it is ironic to say that one "loves" this work, though I do. It's upsetting obviously, and I think Spiegelman does something new with this Holocaust memoir, actually a graphic novel, which is that he not only chronicals humanity's inhumanity to humanity, but also the pain of growing up with someone whose personality facilitated his living through the Holocaust but makes it nearly impossible for anyone else to live through living with him. Spiegelman artfully (no pun) illustrates with his narrative the horror of the Holocaust and the painful demanding self-involvement of Vladek Spiegelman, his father. The book is CLEVER, too. The Jews are mice, the Poles pigs, the Germans cats and the Americans dogs. But in a little narrative digression into the narrator's psychoanalysis in real life, he portrays himself as wearing a mouse mask. I was reading these two books very quickly for the narrative, but felt I was probably missing a lot in the drawings that support the plot and narrative. I really liked this work. I strongly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Thoughts about Maus
Review: Maus is one of the best books I've ever read about the Holocaust. The way Mr. Speigelman portrays his father is excellent;if he makes another book I will be sure to read it.
The inside look about how some people survived the Nazis pulled me into the story.You'll be surprised an delighted with
the cleverness of Vladek, Art's father.The book left me feeling that I should learn more about the Holocaust and that it is definitely not old news.
Rating:
Summary: More subtle than can be understood in a single reading
Review: These books are an easy and fast read, but by no means are they simple. In two slim comic books, Art Spiegelman chronicles his parents' movement from comfortable homes in Poland to the death camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau, and from there to a surreally banal afterlife in upstate New York. We watch the destruction of the Holocaust continue in Spiegelman's father's transformation from a bright, good-looking youth to a miserly neurotic, his mother's deterioration from a sensitive, sweet girl into a suicide, and in the author's own unhappy interactions with his parents. I have read some of the most negative reviews of these books, and I respectfully disagree. Some negative reviews ("Spiegelman is a jerk") castigate Spiegelman for his shamefully self-interested milking of his father's life and the Holocaust. Other negative reviews find fault with the unoriginality of the story, or discover historical inaccuracies, self-contradictions, or simplifications in the tale. Finally, a set of reviews are upset with Spiegelman's coding of people of different nationalities as animals(especially the Poles, who were also victimized by the Nazis but are depicted as pigs in the comics.) The first criticism is both deserved and unfair. Deserved, because Spiegelman profits by the pain and death of millions, including his own family. Unfair, because Spiegelman himself consciously provides the basis for our criticism that he mocked and neglected his elderly father at the same time that he fed his own success upon his father's tales. The two volumes echo with his regret and unexpiable guilt at his treatment of his parents, and at his own success and survival. To attack Spiegelman for these things is like scolding a man in the midst of his self-immolation. The second type of criticism finds _Maus_ to be sophomoric, inaccurate, or repetitive of other Holocaust survivor's experiences. The defense here is that Maus is the story of a single family, seen through the eyes of a single man (Vladek Spiegelman), and filtered again through his son. It is almost certain that the elderly Vladek forgot, exaggerated, or hid details, just as it is certain that his son summarized and misunderstood. However, the quasi-fictionalized format of the comic book throws this subjectivity into relief. The destroyed diaries of Spiegelman's mother are a reminder of the millions of life stories left untold, including stories perhaps too horrible and shameful for the survivors to reveal. _Maus_ does not claim to be an objective, authoritative history of the Holocaust, and in fact tries to emphasize its own limitations. While other works may better convey the Jewish experience in the Holocaust, the innovative format of _Maus_ justifies its existence, as it allows the story to reach a greater audience. Finally, many have objected to the negative stereotyping of the many peoples appearing in the book, especially the Poles. Spiegelman draws the Jews as innocent mice, but the Germans as bloodthirsty cats, and the Poles as selfish pigs. More amusingly (because they appear infrequently in the story) the French are drawn as frogs, the Swedes as reindeer, and the British as cold fish. The Americans are dogs, mainly friendly bow-wow dogs but also sometimes cold-eyed predators capable of pouncing on a mouse or rat. I believe that the wrongness of stereotypes was a major reason why Spiegelman used them. The Nazis are recorded as having called the Jews "vermin" and the Poles "pigs". Whether they had the qualities of these animals or not, they were treated as such... and such they were forced to become despite themselves. The Jews had to hide, hoard, and deceive; the Poles were compelled to act out of self-interest just to survive. In other words, I think that Spiegelman's stereotypes were a deliberate choice. The WHOLE POINT of _Maus_ is how the dehumanization of the Holocaust twisted people beyond their capacities... how the camps tried to make people as ugly and despicable as their worst racial stereotypes, by making them all alike in their fear. Sometimes they succeeded. Neither Poles nor Germans are depicted as only selfish, cowardly, and cruel in _Maus_. In fact, there are many Polish in Spiegelman's books who are shown as fellow-sufferers, or kind despite the risks to their own lives, just as there were Jews who betrayed their own. Look closely at the drawings-- I open Maus II to a random page, and see both pigs and mice in the prison suits, both as capos and victims. Who is the kind priest who renews Vladek's hope on page 28? A Pole! Even the Germans are seen to suffer from the war, caught by powers beyond their control. Meanwhile, Vladek himself is shown to be an inflexible racist (II, p. 98). I argue, therefore, that the above criticisms of _Maus_ show a hasty reading of the books and poor comprehension of how an artist(even of non-fiction) chooses to convey a theme. As a non-European, I have no personal investment in Jewish, German, or Polish points of view. However, as a second-generation American and child of war survivors [a civil war, so we are both victims and oppressors], I have a chord that resonates with the story of the Spiegelmans. I just re-read "Maus II" this afternoon and found to my amazement that it was still able to draw tears. In fact, when I first read the Maus books ten years ago I don't recall them affecting me so deeply... but I was younger then and had only an intellectual understanding of many things, such as love, fear, guilt, death, and weakness. I wholeheartedly recommend these books to those who are willing to read them more than once. If you are not moved by them now, perhaps later you will be. Meanwhile, let's do our best to stop such suffering around the world.
Rating:
Summary: Best Comic Book Ever Made
Review: As one who spent years reading hundreds and hundreds of comic books of all kinds of genres, it is my opinion that Maus is the best of them all. The story is incredible and sadly all too true. This is a truly powerful work. Don't let the fact that the characters are portrayed as animals deter you from picking this gem up.
Rating:
Summary: A Book Review From Me
Review: Maus, by Art Spiegelman, is the tragic story about Art's father. He survived hiding, as well as a concentration camp. At the beginning of the book, Vladek Spiegelman(Art's father) is a successful shopkeeper in Czestochowa. He is forced to go to war where he is captured and is sent to a German prisoner of war camp near Nuremberg. He goes into hiding, and in 1944, ends up in Auschwitz. The story isn't missing anything. Its very well written and organized, but the story had a little too much of the author in it. The book contains too many of the interviews Art did with his father. All the interviews slow the story down. The book is very well organized. It does jump back and forth between the past and the present, but that doesn't make the story confusing, and it still flows together. This book is a haven for badly written sentences, but that just makes this graphic novel more believable. It's easier to read than your average novel, and the pictures provide clues as to what is going on in the story. I give it four stars. I think it deserves four stars because I find true-life novels to be boring, but I couldn't help enjoying this one. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys graphic novels, or anyone interested in survival stories. This novel, although in comic book form, should still be enjoyable to someone interested in history. I really liked this book, but I wouldn't recommend this to someone who expects comic books to be fantasy and make believe. Art Siegelman took a terrible event in his families history, and was able to turn it into a story that not only kept me reading it, but also got me to enjoy it, and I don't like reading. So if you like reading life stories, and comic books, check it out.
Maus, by Art Spiegelman, is the tragic story about Art's father. He survived hiding, as well as a concentration camp. At the beginning of the book, Vladek Spiegelman(Art's father) is a successful shopkeeper in Czestochowa. He is forced to go to war where he is captured and is sent to a German prisoner of war camp near Nuremberg. He goes into hiding, and in 1944, ends up in Auschwitz. The story isn't missing anything. Its very well written and organized, but the story had a little too much of the author in it. The book contains too many of the interviews Art did with his father. All the interviews slow the story down. The book is very well organized. It does jump back and forth between the past and the present, but that doesn't make the story confusing, and it still flows together. This book is a haven for badly written sentences, but that just makes this graphic novel more believable. It's easier to read than your average novel, and the pictures provide clues as to what is going on in the story. I give it four stars. I think it deserves four stars because I find true-life novels to be boring, but I couldn't help enjoying this one. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys graphic novels, or anyone interested in survival stories. This novel, although in comic book form, should still be enjoyable to someone interested in history. I really liked this book, but I wouldn't recommend this to someone who expects comic books to be fantasy and make believe. Art Siegelman took a terrible event in his families history, and was able to turn it into a story that not only kept me reading it, but also got me to enjoy it, and I don't like reading. So if you like reading life stories, and comic books, check it out.
Rating:
Summary: wow harsh stuff...
Review: I originally read Maus when it came out and i had an interest in the Jewish Halocaust. The horrors that this book portrays..sickening and disturbing stuff. Stuff to bring you nightmares.. I cannot get the image of a Nazi Cat picking up a mouse child by the leg and swinging the child against a brick wall bludgeoning it to death..Real powerful stuff. The connecting story of Art and his father Vladek is just as moving for anyone that has ever felt distance from one of their parents..kinda reminds me of me and my dad. I reccomend this book for all ages...But for younger readers I think parents should have discussions with their children. Buy this book !
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