Product Description

At 592 pages, Blankets may well be the single largest graphic novel ever published without being serialized first. Wrapped in the landscape of a blustery Wisconsin winter, Blankets explores the sibling rivalry of two brothers growing up in the isolated country, and the budding romance of two coming-of-age lovers. A tale of security and discovery, of playfulness and tragedy, of a fall from grace and the origins of faith. A profound and utterly beautiful work from Craig Thompson. The New Printing corrects 3 small typos, widening the spine graphics, but otherwise is identical to the first printing.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10391 in Books
• Published on: 2003-07-23
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 592 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Revisiting the themes of deep friendship and separation Thompson surveyed in Goodbye Chunky Rice, his acclaimed and touching debut, this sensitive memoir recreates the confusion, emotional pain and isolation of the author's rigidly fundamentalist Christian upbringing, along with the trepidation of growing into maturity. Skinny, naive and spiritually vulnerable, Thompson and his younger brother manage to survive their parents' overbearing discipline (the brothers are sometimes forced to sleep in "the cubby-hole," a forbidding and claustrophobic storage chamber) through flights of childhood fancy and a mutual love of drawing. But escapist reveries can't protect them from the cruel schoolmates who make their lives miserable. Thompson's grimly pious parents and religious community dismiss his budding talent for drawing; they view his creative efforts as sinful and relentlessly hector the boys about scripture. By high school, Thompson's a lost, socially battered and confused soul-until he meets Raina and her clique of amiable misfits at a religious camp. Beautiful, open, flexibly spiritual and even popular (something incomprehensible to young Thompson), Raina introduces him to her own less-than-perfect family; to a new teen community and to a broader sense of himself and his future. The two eventually fall in love and the experience ushers Thompson into the beginnings of an adult, independent life. Thompson manages to explore adolescent social yearnings, the power of young love and the complexities of sexual attraction with a rare combination of sincerity, pictorial lyricism and taste. His exceptional b&w drawings balance representational precision with a bold and wonderfully expressive line for pages of ingenious, inventively composed and poignant imagery.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-Thompson's Good-bye, Chunkie Rice (Top Shelf, 1999) offered readers well-realized but fantastic characters in a tale that nicely combined sentiment with adventure. This second, much longer work shares the acuity for character development and dynamic sensitivity that makes the author so compulsively readable. In Blankets, however, realism reigns supreme in both the story arc and in the humanity of its characters. Thompson himself is the protagonist, and this is his tale of growing up, falling in love (and realizing the physical and moral complications that can imply), discovering the texture and limits of his faith, and arriving at a point from which he can look back at those experiences. The snowy Midwest, peopled by overweight parents, hairy youths, and lovingly depicted younger siblings-including a respectfully and realistically treated minor character with Down syndrome-is energetically realized in Thompson's expressive lines and inking. Much of the story occurs when Craig and his brother Phil are young boys and includes images of such boyish pranks as peeing on one another. Older high school students who have reached an age when nostalgia is possible will warm to Thompson's own wistfulness. This is a big graphic novel, in concept and successful execution.-Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Thompson's graphic novel debut, Goodbye Chunky Rice (1999), was a delicate parable of loss that garnered deserved acclaim. The eagerly awaited, autobiographical follow-up to it is more ambitious, more accomplished, and more accessible. Thompson recalls growing up in a religious family in rural Wisconsin, particularly his affectionate tussles with his younger brother, with whom he shared a bed and the titular blankets. A few years later, he experiences the painful intensity of first love with Raina, a girl from Michigan he meets at a regional church camp. When the pair are separated, his loss of faith in his love for Raina presages his later loss of religious faith. The blanket motif reappears throughout the work, forthrightly as the handmade quilt Raina gives him, and more subtly as the blank sheets of paper he confronts as a budding artist. Eschewing the usual alt-comics cynicism, Thompson's evocation of high-school romance manages to be both romanticized and clear-eyed. His visual mastery shows in fluid line work, assured compositions, and powerful use of solid black areas and negative space. Weighing in at nearly 600 pages, this is a genuine graphic novel, with a universal appeal that suits it for any collection. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Get your emo kleenex out.
It's been a few years since I first read "Blankets", but I still remember it being an incredibly powerful and fun read. "Blankets" is the book that got me into graphic novels and finally got me reading fiction again. It's that good. Craig is the rejected kid in all of us. He beautifully depicts going to Bible Camp, anxious to finally make some friends because surely Christian kids will take him in. When they reject him, he goes further into himself stating "I can take kids at school making fun of me, but kids at Bible camp...that was a bit much." Amen to that.
Craig Thompson does a superb job taking you back into the mind of a child and an adolescent. Read it at night, in your bedroom alone, with The Smiths playing, or The Pixies, Tori Amos or whatever you listened to in High School. Why not hang some Christmas lights for teenage mood lighting? Either way, prepare to be transported.

Beautiful story with appropriate illustrations
I found this book a few years ago right as I was graduating high school. It resonated with me then and it still does today. I have my own copy now and every few months I take it out and read it again. Whether you've already had that first love that changes your life forever, as Craig did, or you're still waiting to experience that kind of love you will thoroughly enjoy this book. The story is just great and Craig's illustrations complement the text perfectly. I wasn't a fan of graphic novels until I read this book, now I have a new appreciation for them.

Delightfully painful
An incredibly honest story about a kid and later a teenager facing his life through christian eyes. Once you've started to read it, it's like an invitation to come into a world where the most primary, clean and real sensations are felt, page after page. Is not usual that someone cries after reading a book, but probably you wont be able to hold your tears after finishing Blankets...
A graphic novel to recomend, no doubt!