Maus I: A Survivor's Tale

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
A New York Public Library "Books for the Teen Age"
An ALA "Best Books for Young Adults"

Acclaimed as "the most affecting and successful narrative ever done about the Holocaust " (The Wall Street Journal). The first volume introduces readers to Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and his son, a cartoonist trying to come to terms with his father, his father's terrifying story, and history itself. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), succeeds perfectly in shocking us out of any lingering sense of familiarity with the events described, approaching, as it does, the unspeakable through the diminutive. Tragic and comic by turns, it attains a new complexity of theme and a precision of thought new to comics and rare in any medium. The two volumes tie together two powerful stories: Vladek's harrowing tale of survival against all odds, delineating the paradox of daily life in the death camps, and the author's account of his tortured relationship with his aging father.

“Maus is a book that cannot be put down, truly, even to sleep. When two of the mice speak of love, you are moved, when they suffer, you weep. Slowly through this little tale comprised of suffering, humor and life's daily trials, you are captivated by the language of an old Eastern European family, and drawn into the gentle and mesmerizing rhythm, and when you finish Maus, you are unhappy to have left that magical world.” —Umberto Eco

To download a free teacher's guide for Maus, please click on "Teacher's Guides" link above.