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pastelsux 's review for:
Maus: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History
by Art Spiegelman
I feel like everything I could say about this book has already been said more eloquently many times over, but I’ll try anyway.
First, this book was impossible to find for me— which, strangely, is kind of a good thing. In my library system, it was constantly checked out, then ping-ponging between the different branches, then checked out again, and so on and so forth, until finally on a quiet Tuesday morning I was able to snatch it up. I imagine that, like me, a lot of people wanted to read the banned book to see what the deal was with it. Banning books always backfires— it seems to only make them more widespread and acclaimed. And I’m glad so many people, many of them likely teenagers and young adults, living in the fairly conservative area I’m in now were able to get their hands on it.
Everything about this book is amazing and flawlessly executed. It’s impossible to put down from the moment you begin reading. Both Spiegelmans have an important story to tell. The art, also, is amazing. One might think it’d trivialize the story, but it actually makes it even more intense— every once in a while, a horrifying illustration will come up, beady thick-lined eyes staring up off the page, and really paint the picture of desperation so vividly, even through the face of a mouse. It also serves to show the reader how Germany saw Jewish people— as pests to be exterminated en masse rather than as individuals with distinguishing features.
One of the small things I greatly appreciated about the story was that Spiegelman wrote his father’s words exactly as they were said, “””broken””” English and all. Hearing the story in his own words is much more immersive and impactful than if the story had been cleanly repackaged with perfect grammar and convenient footnote translations of the words.
Again, this has all likely been said many times and I’m not bringing any revolutionary literary analysis to the table. I’m just adding my voice to the choir: read this book. Share this book. Talk about this book. Tell everyone what they tried to ban and make sure that for every person this book was kept from, five more get to read it in their place.
First, this book was impossible to find for me— which, strangely, is kind of a good thing. In my library system, it was constantly checked out, then ping-ponging between the different branches, then checked out again, and so on and so forth, until finally on a quiet Tuesday morning I was able to snatch it up. I imagine that, like me, a lot of people wanted to read the banned book to see what the deal was with it. Banning books always backfires— it seems to only make them more widespread and acclaimed. And I’m glad so many people, many of them likely teenagers and young adults, living in the fairly conservative area I’m in now were able to get their hands on it.
Everything about this book is amazing and flawlessly executed. It’s impossible to put down from the moment you begin reading. Both Spiegelmans have an important story to tell. The art, also, is amazing. One might think it’d trivialize the story, but it actually makes it even more intense— every once in a while, a horrifying illustration will come up, beady thick-lined eyes staring up off the page, and really paint the picture of desperation so vividly, even through the face of a mouse. It also serves to show the reader how Germany saw Jewish people— as pests to be exterminated en masse rather than as individuals with distinguishing features.
One of the small things I greatly appreciated about the story was that Spiegelman wrote his father’s words exactly as they were said, “””broken””” English and all. Hearing the story in his own words is much more immersive and impactful than if the story had been cleanly repackaged with perfect grammar and convenient footnote translations of the words.
Again, this has all likely been said many times and I’m not bringing any revolutionary literary analysis to the table. I’m just adding my voice to the choir: read this book. Share this book. Talk about this book. Tell everyone what they tried to ban and make sure that for every person this book was kept from, five more get to read it in their place.