Date: 02/16/2009

San José State Jewish Studies Coordinator Victoria Harrison will lead a discussion on The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale, at 2 p.m. Sunday, February 22, in the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library. The event is part of the "Modern Marvels: Jewish Adventures in the Graphic Novel" series, which continues through Sunday, May 31.

"This graphic novel tells the story of Spiegelman's parents Vladek and Anna, Jews reaching maturity in Europe during the rise 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.

A triumph of storytelling in panels, Maus changed forever the way that readers, critics and artists themselves thought about the graphic novel. In 1992, the Pulitzer Prize committee recognized Spiegelman's groundbreaking achievement by awarding Maus a special prize," event organizers said.

Read more on Modern Marvels.