Sunday, August 31, 2014

Risk Taking Researcher - Maus


Maus
Author: Art Spiegelman
Pages: 72-127
Risk taking researcher

While reading the book for the second week, I felt like it was time to learn more about the author in the book. It is really important to know about the author because we can relate things that happen in the book with the author's life.
Art Spiegelman was born in February 15, 1948 in Itzhak Avraham ben Zeev in Stockholm, Sweden. Spiegelman started cartooning with 12 years old (1960) and imitated the style his favorite comics. Spiegelman always loved drawing. He earned money with his drawing by the time he reached high school. He married Françoise Mouly on July 12, 1977. They met at the Beaux-Arts in Paris. He taught her everything he knew about comics and helped her find a job as colorist for Marvel Comics. In 1987 they had a daughter named Nadja Rachel. In 1992, they had a son named Dashiell Alan. Since Spiegelman suffers from lazy eyes (disorder of sight), he lacks depth perception. He says that his art is a result of his deficiencies. Because he lacks confidence as a visual artist, he is constantly revising his dialogues and visuals. Some of the dialogues in Maus were revised up to forty times.
The book Maus is really based on his father's past in the Holocaust. Everything that happens in the book really happened with his father. Spiegelman would released one chapter at a time. He learned that Steven Spielberg was making an animated movie about Jew mice that escaped the Eastern European persecution by going to the United States. He was sure that the film was inspired by his book Maus. He was anxious to finish and publish his book before the movie came out to avoid comparison. After a lot of hard work trying to find a publisher, he released his book with the first six chapters. The book Maus won 11 awards from 13 nominations and wrote more than 15 books.
I think that knowing that this story was based on Art's father's past makes me realize that everything in the book really happened. At first when I started reading the book, I thought that the author had made everything up. But, knowing that it really happened makes me realize how horrible things were. The Nazis really killed people with no purpose. Art's brother really died because his aunt poisoned him. Things that we wouldn't imagine would happen actually happened. It is sad to realize that there are so many horrible people and and things that exists in this world.

source for information.
source for first image
source for second image


5 comments:

  1. I agree that once you start reading a book, you want to know more about the author. I really liked how you told about Art's history. At the beginning of the book I too also thought it was all made up! Yes, everything was horrible that happened. That's interesting that he started earning money for his drawing by the time he was in high school.

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  2. I really liked your post, it helped me understand better the book. I liked how you told about the author, and how the author was connected with the book. I liked to understand better the author and that he loved drawing, thats why he probably drew pictures in the book.I liked a lot your post.

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  3. By reading your post I now understand from where this idea for the Graphic Novel came from, and now makes it more interesting since this is actually non-fiction. By learning that Art Spiegelman's father actually went through all of this and survived is surprising. By reading this book it looks like it is totally made up, and by knowing this you see how people's lives were hard during those times.

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  4. Julia,
    I agree with you that it is very important to know more about the author. Its important like you said because you can maybe relate the story to the author's life. It turns out the the story was based on the story of his father's life. He choose to write a book with the main character facing all these challenges. By this you get to see what someone felt, saw, heard all at once.

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  5. Julia,
    Because of your post, I now understand the book more. I agree with you because I also think it is critical to add information about the author, book, inspiration and more. You included relevant text, and it was easy to read the words.
    One thing you could change in your post is the formatting. I think you did a great job at gathering information, but I think you could divide your text in paragraphs to make the reading more interesting, as well as lighter and better looking. Well, good job!

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