Maus (Book I: My Father Bleeds History)

This is it! The book that literally put graphic novels on the map- at least in terms of finding a place on your local library's shelves. Originally published by Art Spiegelman in the pages of his groundbreaking Avante Garde comic, RAW. This first volume collects the first six chapters that Spiegelman, researched, wrote, and illustrated from 1980-86.

  
  Maus is a factual account of the author's father and his time spent in Nazi-occupied Europe. Though the Jews are portrayed as mice, the Nazis as cats and non-Jewish Poles are drawn as pigs, this in NOT a funny animal comic. Even though Spiegelman crafted the characters to reflect Hitler's view that the Jews were vermin to be exterminated, deep down there's a more powerful purpose behind the use of animals in this account of the early days of the Holocaust.

   Think about movies such as Bambi or the Lion King. What's the saddest moments of those classic films? It's when the parents die. For some reason, humans are torn to shreds when anthropomorphic animals die in cartoons. I for one cried like a little girl when Fry’s dog died alone on Futurama.

  I have seen the terrible pictures of Jews rescued from Allied forces at the end of the Holocaust. But nothing in the entire Museum of the Holocaust got to me as a full page splash of several Jewish mice being hung to death for trying to survive in the ghettos of Poland. (One thing did literally destroy me at the museum in Washington DC. It was an actual train car used to transport Jews to the concentration camps. The thought of my wife (who is half Jewish) and our children being put in those death wagons because of something beyond their control (their heritage), was a feeling beyond words.)

   Until finally reading this volume did I learn that this was only the first of two books about Spiegelman's family during World War II. I knew of Maus II, but I thought it was about Art and his father coming to grips with the suicide of his mother. But, all of that actually builds into Art convincing his dad to agree to an account of his time in war-torn Europe in framing sequences set in New York around 1978. Maus II will examine what happened after Art's dad was captured by the Nazis and placed in Auschwitz. I will be reading that volume as well!

This is a classic that must not only be read- but it's memory must not be forgotten! The book's lengthy censorship struggle is the reason why I finally got around to reading it. During last month's Banned Book Week, I was encouraged to pick out a banned graphic novel in a post by the CBLDF. I'm very glad that I finally did read this riveting account of the horrors of the ghettos during World War II. It's hard to read at times and not for kids who are not old enough to read the 'Diary of Anne Frank'- no matter how friendly those mice look on the cover.

Worth Consuming

Rating: 10 out of 10 stars.