What: The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale by Art Spiegelman, part of the free five-part reading and discussion series Let’s Talk About It: Jewish Literature – Modern Marvels
Where: Highland Park Branch Library
When: Tuesday, July 8, 2008 • 7 p.m.
Facilitator: Judith Katz, University of Minnesota Center for Jewish Studies
Free and open to the public.
More information: http://wilson.lib.umn.edu/outreach/marvels.html

The comic book transfigured, this graphic novel tells the story of Spiegelman's parents Vladek and Anna, Jews reaching maturity in a Europe on the verge of Nazism, and their terrifying history and eventual survival in the concentration camps. Spiegelman uses the broadest tools of the genre—Jews are drawn as mice, Nazis as cats, Poles as pigs, Frenchmen as frogs, and so on—to make vivid the unimaginable, both to the reader and to himself, appearing as a character in the book listening to his father's story.

This series explores Jewish literature and culture through scholar-led discussions of contemporary and classic books on the theme of “Modern Marvels: Jewish Adventures in the Graphic Novel.” The program is the result of a grant to the University of Minnesota—Twin Cities Libraries, which is partnering with The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library. Local support is provided by the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Minnesota. Let’s Talk About It: Jewish Literature, a reading and discussion series, has been made possible through a grant from Nextbook and the American Library Association.