Monday, February 23, 2009

Books: Maus by Art Spiegelman

We have to apologize for our sudden unexpected absence last week, we took off some time to hang out with our Uncle Carter, Aunt Annie, Aunt Heady, and the rest of the crew. A tiny vacation, but we're glad that it's over now, and we hope that Uncle Busty recovers quickly!

While we were waiting for someone to pay attention to us this weekend, we had many opportunities to read, so we picked up our Uncle Buster's copy of Maus, which had been recommended to us before, but which we had never had an opportunity to read. Maus is another graphic novel, but entirely different from Rabbi's Cat, and we loved it. Our accolades are nearly as prestigious as some of the other awards Art Spiegelman has received for it, like the Pulitzer Prize...

The book is a graphic novel memoir told from the perspective of the author as he interviews his father about life as a Jew in Poland during WWII, including a year spent at Auschwitz. The Jews are portrayed as mice, the Nazi's as cats, the Poles and pigs, the Americans as dogs, and so on. We loved the way the story was told, and it's realistic aspect, despite the comic strip format. Again, though it is a comic book, we wouldn't recommend it for younger readers because of the (fairly obvious) graphic scenes and heavy subject material.


Quick vote: This book was phenomenal, and we would whole-heartedly recommend it to anyone!

Aunt Annie's 2 Cents: I like to eat mice.

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