Pedro and Me: Press

From the Critics

School Library Journal

Gr 9 Up - In graphic-novel format, Winick addresses the moral depth of friendship, the molding processes of family, the attention required to discern and pursue a vocation, HIV education, acceptance of gay-identifying youth by themselves and by their families, and the role of death in the human life cycle. The author does a stellar job of marrying image to word to form a flowing narrative. He introduces readers to his own formation as a cartoonist wanna-be, and how he landed a role in MTV's The Real World series in order to live rent-free in San Francisco for six months.

Among his television producer-selected roommates was Pedro Zamora, a Cuban immigrant who developed HIV as a teenager. Pedro's response to his diagnosis was to become an HIV educator, traveling around the nation to give informed and inspirational speeches in venues that included schools. Zamora and Winick became close friends after the author's initial trepidation about sharing living space with a gay man infected with the AIDS virus. The role of another of their roommates, a female Asian-American medical student, both in Winick's education and his personal life, is nicely folded into his account.

The story continues through Zamora's decline and death to the periods of grieving and grief recovery that followed for Winick, Zamora's family, and his many friends.

This is an important book for teens and the adults who care about them. Winick handles his topics with both sensitivity and a thoroughness that rarely coexist so seamlessly.

Children's Literature

This unique book presents the powerful relationship between the author and Pedro Zamora, the HIV-positive, AIDS educator who appeared on MTV's The Real World San Francisco. The two men were roommates on the show.

Not only did Pedro teach Judd about courage and friendship, but he also taught millions of television viewers about being gay and living with AIDS. This special book pays a lovely, genuine tribute to an inspiring young man whose efforts to educate young people about the dangers of unsafe sex now continues after his death.

Winick is a talented cartoonist and writer, who combines his abilities with a great story in this book.

2000, Henry Holt, $15.00. Ages 10 up.
Reviewer: Rebecca Joseph

Big Picture Review - (Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books)

A narrative of dignity and extraordinary accessibility . . . Zamora would be proud.

Publisher's Weekly

In this powerful and captivating graphic novel, Winick, a professional cartoonist and cast member of MTV's The Real World 3: San Francisco, pays tribute to his Real World housemate and friend Pedro Zamora, an AIDS activist and educator who died of the disease in 1994. Striking just the right balance of cool and forthrightness sure to attract a broad cross section of teens, twenty-somethings and beyond, Winick describes the special bond he developed with Zamora and shares some of his own journey to enlightenment about AIDS awareness.

From Winick's initial preconceptions about the disease to the ultimate moments of heartbreaking loss, the author bravely invites readers into a life-altering experience. The result is never mawkish: Winick speaks of his friend not with otherworldly awe, but with palpable love and warmth and profound admiration.

Readers unfamiliar with the graphic novel genre would do well to start with this title. Winick imbues deceptively simple black-and-white comic-strip art with a full spectrum of emotion, and his approach is particularly adept at conveying Zamora's mind-set; for instance, a series of partial views of Zamora driving, just after he's received the news that he's HIV positive, communicates Zamora's anxiety and confusion. Throughout, Winick depicts Zamora as a vital force, a tireless teacher using frank language to relate facts about how people contract the virus that causes AIDS, how they can prevent it and how they can live with it.

An innovative and accessible approach to a difficult subject.

Kirkus

Cartoonist Winick paints an emotional, graceful portrait of the life of Pedro Zamora, his roommate on the forerunner to today's reality-TV craze, MTV's The Real World. When the seven castmembers first met in San Francisco in early 1994, they knew one of them was HIV-positive, but not which one. Winick soon discovered that it was his chosen roommate, openly gay, Cuban-born Pedro.

Wasting little time here on his own initial concerns, Winick delves into some subtle, very effective myth-bashing regarding AIDS and HIV, mostly through the straightforward, ebullient words of Pedro, who was diagnosed when he was 17 and started working as an AIDS educator soon after.

Winick leavens the chronicle of Pedro's illness with his romance with -- and subsequent onair marriage to -- Sean, Winick's own blossoming love for a fellow castmember, funny injections of camp (" 'How was I going to say it without saying it?' . . . 'I could really go for some fruit. Speaking of fruit . . .' "), and a taste of the behind-the-scenes angst of living life in front of a TV audience for six months.

The depiction of Pedro's spiral toward death, at the age of 22, is difficult, but ultimately uplifting, to read. The format -- a memoir in the form of a graphic novel -- is enticing, with images that are effusive and alive on the page and dialogue bubbles full of language spoken in unsparing terms and teaching some urgent lessons.

Engrossing, wise, and impossibly brave.