Anyone can appreciate it, but if you're over 21 and enjoy snarky humor, then you will love it doubly! That kind of leads to the next point. This is book that will appeal to people of all ages. (1) Don't be fooled by the bright red 'Scholastic' imprint on the cover. Here are a few things that may motivate you to give this book a second glance. Coupled with the fact that I myself have been experiencing a dental nightmare since November, I figured I was primed to appreciate this book.įirst things first, you don't really need to know too much about the plot, because it really will ruin it for you. Although this book has been making the popularity rounds on YouTube and in other YA circles, it didn't really appeal to me until a booktuber I follow, who isn't a reader of YA books, mentioned a few things that piqued my interest.

Smile is a memoir graphic novel that centers around Telgemeier's traumatic orthodontic experience. This is a must-read for anyone who has ever gone through puberty you know who you are. And with that they wander off into a bright future. let's go eat!' Phew! These new amigos are actually fun to be around. But these new friends are nothing like the petty old friends. Dreading what she has come to expect as inevitable teasing in response to each dental iteration, she approaches her friends with trepidation. Despite all she has endured, the results are far from perfect. The moment-of-truth comes when Raina is finally freed from her brace-faced prison. Of course she adrift and lonely for a while, but Raina makes new friends soon enough.

She realizes no friends are better than those friends. In a particularly wonderful moment, Raina rebukes her long-time 'friends' who do nothing but tear her down and tease her. (As if puberty isn't traumatic enough!) Follow this lost heroine as she battles pimples, overcomes destructive friendships with hypercritical mean girls, endures painful oral surgeries, and finally finds her way to feeling at home in her own skin when she reaches high school. This one misstep plunged her into a four-year ordeal of painful procedures, torturous surgeries, not-to-mention a perpetually changing appearance at a time when every kid is having a crisis of confidence. Then, while horsing around with her friends, she fell, and knocked out her two front teeth. In sixth grade Tanglemeier got braces to fix a run-of-the-mill overbite. The author tells of her own particular journey of adolescent woe which came in the form of a seemingly endless tangle of dentists, endontists, periodontists, orthodonists, with their promises to perfect her not-so pearly whites. Graphic Novelist Raina Talgemeier knows this all too well she is the Odysseus of modern dentistry. Poet Ogden Nash said, 'Some tortures are physical/And some are mental,/But the one that is both/Is dental.'

Smile by raina telgemeier