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. ( )