Smile

Comics and graphic novels

First published: 2010
Print length: 214 pagesGraphix, 2010

Description

In sixth grade, Raina Telgemeier trips after a Girl Scouts meeting and badly damages her two front teeth. The accident begins years of dental appointments and procedures that follow her through middle school and into high school. Braces and other treatments promise repair, but they cannot resolve her persistent sense of looking different or make the social world around her easier to navigate. As Raina worries about fitting in, friendships become another source of discomfort, especially when acceptance seems to require ignoring how others treat her. Meeting a group of unconventional classmates opens the possibility of more genuine connection. This autobiographical graphic novel uses physical recovery to trace the slower work of adolescence: developing confidence, recognizing healthy friendship, and defining a self beyond appearance.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Conversational · Dialogue-driven · Direct · Witty

Pace

Brisk

Tone

Hopeful · Humorous · Reflective · Warm

Structure

Chronological nonfiction

Focus

Character · Relationships · Voice

Emotional intensity

3 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 1 / 5
Ideas: 2 / 5
Structure: 2 / 5
Background knowledge: 1 / 5

Themes

BelongingComing of ageFriendshipIdentityTransformation

About Raina Telgemeier

Raina Telgemeier is an American cartoonist whose memoirs, fiction, and adaptations have helped establish a broad readership for middle-grade comics. Her direct, dialogue-driven storytelling focuses on how physical vulnerability, embarrassment, friendship, and family life shape adolescence. In the autobiographical Smile and Guts, dental trauma and persistent stomach problems are inseparable from social pressure and changing relationships. Her fiction carries that attention into other settings, including the school theater community of Drama and the family story at the center of Ghosts. Telgemeier developed her practice through the discipline of publishing a weekly webcomic, a schedule that helped her shape Smile. Her four adaptations of Ann M. Martin’s Baby-Sitters Club stories provided the financial support that allowed her to leave her full-time job and concentrate on her art.