#tea bendix

[slaughter-books]

Day 22: JOMPBPC: Books And Socks

Three beautiful books by Patrick Ness and two pairs of Grinch Christmas socks! ❤️💚

[teenslib]

Tumblr, you need to read this book. I'm only a third of the way in but it's SOOO good. It's about four high school boys who have been friends since childhood. Jack is gay, and Charlie keeps picking on him for it, but Charlie is also doing sexual things with Ant (our narrator). Ant has feelings for Charlie but doesn't like how he treats Jack and is trying to figure out this whole mess and what it means about him as a person.

The text of the book is being censored by an outside force, and the boys are aware of it and seemingly aware that they're in a book:

So it's also about censorship, both from authority figures, as well as censoring oneself to fit who you think you are (or are supposed to be).

Oh! AND it has these beautiful pencil-and-digital illustrations by Tea Bendix that are sketchy, smudgy, additive and subtractive, cut and pasted, and very dynamic. They emphasize the unfinished nature of the MCs, their personalities in flux.

This is the best book I've read so far this year, and I can't wait to see where it's going!

[slaughter-books]

Day 17: JOMPBPC: Predictable

I didn't know what to do for this prompt, so I took a photo of this beautifully written and illustrated book, that I loved reading in 2023! ❤️