Blankets

Product Information

Craig.Snow. Brothers. Church camp. Patchwork. Under the pool table. Cubby holes. Identity. Faith. The future. First loves. Doubt (“It’s reassuring”). Raina: Craig's first love, a fellow Christian whom Craig first meets at a church camp. Like Craig, her family is not well-off financially, and her parents' divorce causes her stress. She also takes care of her mentally disabled sister and brother. Although she believes in God, she does not believe as strongly as Craig does. Ma che bellezza questa graphic novel!! l' ho letta insieme a mia figlia adolescente e chiudendo il libro avevamo tutte e due il magone..... avrei voluto entrare nel libro e strapazzare di tenerezze quei due bambini, mi sono ritrovata rapita nel seguire la loro crescita, malinconica di fronte ai loro dolori e maltrattamenti, felice per i primi incontri positivi ed estasiata per la prima vera tenerezza d'amore con una ragazza.

Très belle! And for those of you who have developed a love for the grown-up coloring book? You could defile the crap out of Mr. Thompson’s creation : ) I really want to give certain authors this book to show them the meaning behind the phrase “show not tell”. Phil: Craig's younger brother. Like Craig, he likes to draw, and the first portion of the story details their childhood together, though they later drift apart. Their adventures are also recalled at least once in each chapter throughout the book. I also loved that he didn't go down the whole “Uhh, yeah, religion is crap”... “But why is it ‘crap’?”… “Uh well, because it is” road.Harper, Rachel (February 8, 2007). "Library policy has first reading". Marshall Democrat-News. Archived from the original on March 11, 2016 . Retrieved March 5, 2007. Raina's father: Raina's father is a man who is loyal to his own beliefs and is hoping to salvage his relationship with his wife. Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-1-g862e Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Japanese Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.6508 Ocr_module_version 0.0.14 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-WL-1200080 Openlibrary_edition Laura and Ben: Raina's adopted sister and brother, both of whom are mentally disabled. Ben is a far more quiet and collected person, whereas Laura is far more energetic. It's implied that Ben has Down syndrome; Laura's disability is not specified, but she functions at the level of a very young child.

I’m not sure what it was but there was something about the feel of the story that I just wasn't getting. When you started Blankets in the ‘90s, what was the initial inspiration? Was it the romance? Was it wanting to write about your family? How satisfying it is to leave a mark on a blank surface. To make a map of my movement…no matter how temporary.” Anyway this graphic novel starts off as another retelling of that first kind of story. It almost felt cliche to me. The only thing that held my interest was the artwork which is beautifully lively and yet subtle, throughout the book.Oh Raina, you little dreamer. I can’t help but feel you would be best friends with all of John Green’s heroines. I’ve drawn all my books, essentially, in Portland, so I wasn’t experiencing a lot of snow at the time I drew Blankets. I was nostalgic for it, longing for it—and trying to tap the essence of that memory of how snow emotionally felt to me. I always think of nature and landscape as a character.

You end Blankets with the words “no matter how temporarily.” It’s so hard to get to that point of acceptance—to accept that you had an experience that’s gone, but still treasure it. How did you get there as a storyteller and as a person? Reception [ edit ] Craig Thompson sketches Raina in a copy of the book at a September 20, 2011, book signing at Midtown Comics in Manhattan. It's not all about love here. This memoir also gives you a great feel for Wisconsin in winter (cold), sibling rivalry (lots of urine), a sexually abusive babysitter (disgusting) and religious fundamentalist parents (thank God I didn't have them). Arnold, Andrew. (December 18, 2003). "Top 10 Everything 2003: 1. Blankets by Craig Thompson". Time. accessed September 21, 2011. It was a really weird double standard. It’s reflected in that scene [in Blankets] too, where it’s OK that I’m drawing war on one side of the paper, but the fact that I drew a naked lady on the other side…I was always getting in trouble for that kind of stuff as a kid.

I will say immediately that Thompson does not give answers to these questions. I do not finish the novel knowing. Actually, I finish the novel not really even knowing what to think, or how to think. Rather, I am immersed in feeling. “Blankets” is one of its own titular objects – the language and art wrap around me as I read, muting the harshness of the outside. Thompson takes me in and makes me experience the memories, the cold, the internal conflict. It’s honestly hard to describe. (I’m clearly struggling here – how do I express with words what art does to the way I feel, without destroying that very feeling with particularities?) I grew up in this strict religious household where media was censored, but somehow violent media was not discouraged. So I grew up with all the Arnold films— Commando, Predator, all that stuff—that was all allowed to be consumed in the house, but anything that had a hint of sexuality was immediately shut down. For instance, Tom Hanks’ Big, I never saw that as a kid, because it’s implied that he had sex. Every year I teach this book in my YA course it comes up as one of the top three favorite texts in the course. I might go so far as to say it is one of the top ten or twenty graphic novels of all time. Powerful, gorgeous, touching, expressive, it’s among other things a meditation on first or young love, with sweeping and /or anguished art accomplished in the romantic tradition, with all the emotional highs and lows of young love. Thompson’s story might be described as autobiographical fiction; set in Wisconsin, where he grew up with his controlling parents and his brother Phil, art and fantasy (he calls it dreaming) and hangin' with his bro are his escapes. The artwork in Blankets is also a patchwork quilt of gorgeous, sweeping, romantic images of the natural world (snow, trees, weather), likening it to patterns in Raina’s dress and hair, open and free and spacious and lovely in contrast to the darker, more sinister patches of his oppressive house and Sunday school. There’s also an emblem or mark that weaves its way through the book, present whenever Craig recognizes something as sacred. At one point that essentially Calvinist-raised Craig even forgives himself enough for his transgressions to even share a halo with Raina. Through her, rather than earning Hell, he achieves the sacred with her for a brief time. As a child, I thought that life was the most horrible world anyone could ever live in, and that there HAD to be something better."