Smile by Raina Telgemeier

“Weird... something happens when you smile at people. They smile back.”

Author: Raina Telgemeier

Illustrator: Raina Telgemeier (colors by Stephanie Yue)

Literary genre: autobiographical coming-of-age graphic novel

Editor: Scholastic

Publication date: 2010

Number of pages: 224

Summary: Smile is about an 11 year old girl named Raina who lives in San Francisco with her family: mother, father, sister (Amara) and brother (Will). She is a sixth grader at Aptos Middle School and just wants to be a normal girl. But one night, after a meeting of Girl Scouts she falls and injures her two front teeth. After this accident Raina deals with a long and frustrating journey with on-again, off-again braces, surgery, embarrassing headgear, and even a retainer with fake teeth attached. But not only that, she has also to survive to a major earthquake, annoying siblings and friends who turn out to be not so friendly...

My opinion: I actually read this novel two years ago but I remembered it last week and decided to write the review about it because it's remarkable. On Wednesday afternoon there was a storm outside while I was with my family at home. Suddenly the electricity went off in our whole neighborhood. Nobody thought that it was going to last so long but we stayed till 11pm without power. I remembered then the earthquake episode of Smile and I started reading it again. I found out that Raina's family stayed just 3 hours without power and that's why I related Raina's life to mine.

This book is one of the best graphic novels that I have ever read. First of all I love how it is drawn. On the other hand, I enjoyed the story very much and found it very interesting, funny and touching knowing that actually it is a true story!

I like also the idea of doing an autobiography in the form of a graphic novel.

In Smile, readers can easely relate themselves to the story (like I did) and I think it's very important so that they are more able to enter the story. Like Raina herself says "This coming-of-age true story is sure to resonate with anyone who has ever been in middle school, and especially those who have ever had a bit of their own dental drama" ;).

Passage that I like: