Blankets [is a] lovely memoir of childhood and first love.
Washington Post
$49.95 CAD/$39.95 USD
Blankets is the story of a young man coming of age and finding the confidence to express his creative voice. Craig Thompson’s poignant graphic memoir plays out against the backdrop of a Midwestern winterscape: finely-hewn linework draws together a portrait of small town life, a rigorously fundamentalist Christian childhood, and a lonely, emotionally mixed-up adolescence.
Under an engulfing blanket of snow, Craig and Raina fall in love at winter church camp, revealing to one another their struggles with faith and their dreams of escape. Over time though, their personal demons resurface and their relationship falls apart. It’s a universal story, and Thompson’s vibrant brushstrokes and unique page designs make the familiar heartbreaking all over again.
This groundbreaking graphic novel, winner of two Eisner and three Harvey Awards, is an eloquent portrait of adolescent yearning; first love (and first heartache); faith in crisis; and the process of moving beyond all of that. Beautifully rendered in pen and ink, Thompson has created a love story that lasts.
Praise for Blankets
Blankets [shares] the compelling, heartbreaking story of Thompson's childhood and first love.
USA Today Pop Candy
[Blankets is a] massive coming-of-age wintertime tale. Craig Thompson casts himself in this memoir of sorts as one of two Wisconsin brothers who are stifled by religious parents and bullied by classmates, and he finds solace and a heartwarming love when he meets a teen girl named Raina at a religious camp.
USA Today
Blankets has the thematic sophistication, emotional sweep and beauty of (visual) language that mark the best novels… Part teen romance novel, part coming-of-age novel, part faith-in-crisis novel and all comix, Blankets is a great American novel.
Time
Blankets magically recreates the high emotional stakes of adolescence. Thompson has set new bars for the medium not just in length, but breadth.
Time, Best Comics of 2003
Craig Thompson's Blankets is a human story told with beautiful, flowing linework, and is usually the first graphic novel that I'll give to someone new.
The Atlantic
Blankets is a classic in every genre it touches.
Stephen Chbosky
The snowy Midwest, peopled by overweight parents, hairy youths, and lovingly depicted younger siblings… is energetically realized in Thompson's expressive lines and inking.
School Library Journal
[Thompson’s] acclaimed debut, Blankets, chronicled his harsh upbringing in a fundamentalist Christian home.
Rolling Stone
Reading Blankets is like reliving your youth as you wander through the artist’s personal trials of fundamentalist religion and teenage heart-break in small-town America. The story has been told many times, but Craig Thompson’s version is one of the most honest, warm and compelling renditions. It’s like going home with a close friend and discovering how similar your journeys truly are.
Paste Magazine, 20 Best Graphic Novels of the Decade
Blankets is Craig Thompson’s lyrical bildungsroman told in graphic-novel form. Maligned and mistreated by his religious family and community, a self-loathing Thompson grapples with faith and love only to discover that loss is everywhere. The expert drawings and absorbing narrative depict the inherent sadness in growing up, but the real resonance is found in the marriage of text and image.
Paste Magazine, 20 Best Books of the Decade
[Blankets] breaks your heart with the illustrated story of Craig's lonely, isolated childhood in rural Wisconsin—complete with frigid winters, no money, a sexually abusive male babysitter and daily smackdowns from the bullies (and teachers) at school. [When] he meets Raina at a Christian overnight camp… their feelings for each other create a kind of magical bubble that allows them to find out who they are as people—even if, one day, inevitably, that bubble must pop.
Oprah.com
In Thompson's 600-page semi-autobiographical tome, a young man gripped in the often-painful process of discovering his adult self attempts to forge a spiritual and artistic identity even as he falls helplessly in love with a girl who represents everything his life has been missing. Thompson deftly married spare text to often lyrical imagery to create in the reader the same exhilarating tension of first love that seizes his hero.
NPR
In telling his story, which includes beautifully rendered memories of the small brutalities that parents inflict upon their children and siblings upon each other, Thompson describes the ecstasy and ache of obsession (with a lover, with God) and is unafraid to suggest the ways that obsession can consume itself and evaporate.
New York Times
Blankets is one of the greatest love stories ever written, and surely the best ever drawn.
Joss Whedon
Blankets is a thing of huge power and grace… Quaint, meditative and sometimes dreamy, Blankets will take you straight back to your first kiss.
The Guardian, Ten Best Graphic Novels
Craig Thompson’s autobiographical coming-of-age story is sweet and dreamy, covering the profoundly intense experience of falling in love for the first time, questioning your faith, and negotiating your relationship with your siblings.
Flavorwire
[Blankets is a] bittersweet tale of childhood psyche bruising, junior Christian angst, and adolescent first love with a lyricism so engaging, the pages fly right by… it’s virtual poetry.
Entertainment Weekly
An unabashedly emotional memoir, Blankets told Thompson’s own story of first love and fundamentalism, romance and religion, as both discovered and lost by him while a teenager in the snowy northern Midwest. Drawn in a sweeping, inviting style, its sheer loveliness attracted readers from beyond comics’ traditional audience, while the universality of its subject matter and the specificity of Thompson’s experience of it kept them turning the pages.
Comic Book Resources, The 30 Most Important Comics of the Decade
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.
Booklist, Starred Review
The story is shocking and vivid, a tale as gripping as any you'll read. Thompson's spiritual journey and difficult relationship with his family is matched only by his depitction of his teenaged love and heartbreak with Raina, a girl he meets at Winter Bible Camp. It's the truest and most heartfelt description of pure youthful love as I've found."
BoingBoing
Blankets [is] an autobiographical, gorgeously lyrical book about first loves and religious obsessions…this is a painful book, but it carries a sweetness that borders on profundity. It’s essentially Elliott Smith’s music in autobiographical-comic form.
AV Club, Best Comics of the 00's
