Maus is a artistic masterpiece and like any masterpiece, it is from the artist's singular perspective. It does not tell everyone's story, just the storyteller's. The story's horror is amplified by justaposing a comic book format and cartoonish animal characters. If you are distracted or offended by the choice of animals or focus of the story, you are missing the point and are truly welcome to tell your story from your perspective and in your own way. That is the point of being the storyteller. Maus is not meant as an comprehensive account of the Holocaust. Spending a full day at the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC will bring you closer to that goal. Another is the 8+ hour 1985 documentary, "Shoah," which is available on DVD on eBay for $17.50 US and should be available on Amazon for about the same amount. Using a simple interview format and no stock footage, you hear incredible stories from Jews and Christians, Poles, Germans, and others, eye witnesses and scholars. You meet evil and good. They tell you what they saw, heard, felt, and did. You see the sites as they are now. Like any good documentary, you draw your own conclusions by the end of the film. Maus is a great work of art designed to make the reader feel something of what it was like for the storyteller, but it is not a documentary. Maus uses facts and impressions to create images that take the reader on an emotional journey to a place where mere words and numbers on a page can never go.

I bought this product and then later found both Maus I and Maus II, together in one book and for the same price, at my school bookstore. I would recommend buying both in one package to save money.

It is a well told story and is worth the read. I would recommend "American Born Chinese" if you like the style of this book.

I've used Maus in my classroom for two years now and it's a wonderful book to introduce students to a serious topic using an easily accessible format. It leads to a nice study of the holocaust, allows students to explore the ideas of discrimination, generational differences and using pictures to share a story.

This was required 7-th grade reading for my daughter, but since it is a sensitive subject, I read the book to together with her. Also, in Massachusetts the state education curriculum doesn't touch world history until 9th grade, so she had no clue what any of the historical references were. Therefore for each page that took 10 seconds to read (it's in comic book format), we probably spent 5 minutes in explanation of what was going on.

Bottom line: if you are familiar with the history of the Holocaust, this book is an interesting take on the subject. If you have not studied WWII, the book will be confusing.

the book is like new and i really surprise when i see the book like this