Series Info/Source: This is the complete Maus graphic novel. I got a copy of this as a Christmas Gift.
Thoughts: The dense writing style and heavy lined black and white artwork were a bit intimidating at first but once I got started reading the story I didn’t even notice it or find it hard to read. This story is completely engrossing. Spiegelman does an amazing job of alternating between the past and the present and recounting the intense and sad story of his father living through the Holocaust. What amazed me is he did in a way that was incredibly impactful without ever being too dark.
I was completely engrossed in this book from page one. And I quickly grew to love Maus’s father and his family. I was continually surprised how much of Maus’s father’s survival was because of how resourceful his father was. His father is extremely adaptable and takes on every chance he has to learn a new skill, this (along with quite a bit of luck) is the number one thing that leads to him surviving the nightmare of the Holocaust.
Is this an uplifting book? Not really, it is more of a cautionary tale. Even though his father survives the Holocaust, the effects continue to echo through his life many years later. The people who survived the events of the Holocaust have to live with the Holocaust forever in their minds and this continues to affect their families generations later. So much thought and skill went into telling this story; it was just incredibly well done.
There is some irony to the fact that I asked for this for Christmas and then shortly after it was banned in Texas because of inappropriate content. I don’t know how to tell people this…but the whole Holocaust was inappropriate and it would be really hard to tell an accurate story of what happened without going into some of the violence and death that happened.
Is the violence and death presented in an excessive way in this book? Most definitely not. Discussions of the gas chambers and killing of children in the streets of ghettos are addressed matter of factly. Hiding in piles of dead people’s shoes and witnessing the aftermath of a gas chamber are things that really happened. At the time these people were trying to survive one atrocity after another; the atrocities were fact and they are presented as such in this book. People did what they could to keep themselves and their families safe.
Should you have your five year old read this? Well do you want to explain the Holocaust to your 5 year old? I might hold off for a bit. We talked about the Holocaust with my son in late elementary/early middle school. He actually checked out this very book from his middle school library and had A LOT of questions for us after he read it. They were excellent questions and we had some very good and thoughtful discussions as a family because of this book. This is a incredibly valuable way to learn about the Holocaust. I think it should be available for everyone in middle school and older to read.
My Summary (5/5): Overall I was incredibly impressed with this graphic novel and the amazing job it did blending the past of the Holocaust with the effect it continues to have on people’s day to day lives. I would recommend to middle grade and up readers because the Holocaust is a complicated topic and kids need to be a certain age in order to begin to comprehend cruelty on this scale. Is this book excessively violent or “Inappropriate”? No, not at all. It addresses the topic with excellent candor wrapped into an incredibly engaging story of one man’s survival of these horrific events.
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Top reviews from other countries
Moon Flower
An authentic depiction of the holocaust as a comic presented by the son of a survivor.
Reviewed in Germany on April 24, 2023
Moon Flower
Reviewed in Germany on April 24, 2023
Somewhat I am glad that recently there were news about Maus getting banned in several schools in the USA as this is how I found out about this book. It is ridiculous that this cautionary and exemplary depiction of one of the worst happenings in recent human history gets taken away from educational premises just because there are a few panels depicting the prisoners naked, one of the many undignifying ways they have been treated.
There is a vast amount of material about the nazis in the media. Documentations, series, books, games etc. To me this topic just became repetitive and I am full of it; but this very work of art here hit me differently. It isn't yet another story about the nazis, Hitler, nor his cronies. It is the story about Vladek, one person who managed to endure and survive these horrors and ordeals, presented genuinely in a non-evaluating way.
Furthermore this comic achieves to defuse the graphical gruesomeness from actual film material, yet it portrays the atrocities with the same importance. This is partially achieved by the author's choice of a more minimalistic and binary style. It makes the topic more accessible and bearable without cutting on the actual events. It still is a deeply disturbing, uncensored story while being more accessible and easier to get through.
The English language used often appears a little broken but I noticed that this is specifically only when Vladek is talking and telling, which is 80% of the book. Art himself and other characters he meets speak correctly. That means the author decided to not change the way his father spoke English, which adds to the touch of such a personal storytelling.
I did not like part 2 as much as part 1 because it takes some focus away from Vladek's experiences in favour of his interview and interactions with Art. Though, the two stories - being his past and present - are intertwined through his character. He has quite an unsympathetic nature and - ironically enough - is "in some ways [...] just like the racist caricature of the miserly old jew", as the author states himself. One can draw more and more parallels of Vladek's behaviours in the present which got engraved in his nature as they led him to survive the tortures of the past. Ultimately, it even shows the self-fulfilling prophecy of the stereotypical portrayal of the "miserly old jew" which can be encountered numerous times throughout humanity's history, and which appears to be a result of their need to survive inside other cultures that marginalise and target them.
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