The book MAUS (prounounced "mouse") is part biography, part autobiography. In the form of a graphic novel (similar to a full-length comic book), Art Spiegelman tells the story of his father's survival of the Holocaust during World War II. Vladek Spiegelman survived the Nazi Germans attempt to kill all of the Jews in Europe during the 1940's. Instead of just writing a biography with words, however, Art Spiegelman uses comics. And instead of showing people, he changes the characters into different animals. The Jews are represented as mice (which are easily attacked and killed), the Germans are cats (chasing after the mice), Americans are dogs (which some think of us protectors, but also predators), and the Polish are pigs (because some people believe that they didn't not help enough Jews and were greedy).This is an amazing story of one man's survival and how that changed his own life and, in retelling his own story, how it changed his son's life. Art Spiegeleman writes his father's biography and at the same time, is writing his own autobiography. He talks with a great deal of emotion about the Jewish concentration camps and surviving the beatings, starvation, and gas chambers that went on during that time in history. This is an excellent book for anyone that would like to know what it might have been like to survive the Holocaust and how it affected so many people.
Book review by
Mr. DiScala, Media Specialist
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