Pedro And Me

Pedro and Me

Pedro and Me is the book that I chose for my review. I chose this from the humorous category because Chris Johnson told me that it was funny. The author of the book is Judd Winick, who was on MTV's show The Real World. Judd comes onto the show knowing that one of his roommates was HIV positive, but he did not know who. He soon meets Pedro and learns that he is the one, and realizes how normal it is living with somebody that has the HIV virus. This book had its' funny parts, but I probably would not consider it in the "humorous" category. The book is animated and written like a cartoon because that is Judd's specialty as you will later learn.

Judd and Pedro become roommates on The Real World. They begin to bond and become really good friends in a short amount of time. Pedro goes around the country and educates anyone who will listen about AIDS. He has been doing so almost since the day he learned that he was infected with the virus. Judd is a comic book artist who has just graduated the University of Michigan Art School. He is trying to get his work published and not having much success. When he gets to San Francisco, which is where they are living, he gets a small deal that pays $22 a week. It isn't much but Judd will take anything to get his work published. Judd comes to realize after awhile that people with AIDS are not sick; they are just living with AIDS, not any different from himself or anybody else. At first Judd was kind of nervous because he had never been around anyone with AIDS and he did not know if it would be awkward or not. I think that the different style of writing for this book was intriguing. It is the first ever non-fiction story that I have read that is in comic form. The style kept me much more interested than a normal book. I am much more educated on AIDS than I was before I read the book. It raises a lot of valid points