Smile

I picked up Smile because I kept seeing it in school libraries, always checked out, always a little beat up at the corners. That kind of wear tells you something before you even open the book. Raina Telgemeier published it in February 2010 with Graphix, the graphic novel imprint of Scholastic, and it runs 213 pages in the standard paperback edition. Colors are by Stephanie Yue. It started life as a short webcomic on Girlamatic and grew into a full memoir about sixth grade through high school. It later won an Eisner Award in 2011 for Best Publication for a Teen Audience, and it became the first book in the Smile series, followed by Sisters and then Guts. I read it in one sitting, then flipped back through to look at faces.

The hook is simple and awful in the way only middle school injuries can be. Raina is in sixth grade in San Francisco. One night after Girl Scouts she is running with friends and she trips and falls hard, mouth first. Her two front teeth are knocked loose and pushed up. There is blood and shock and a frantic trip to get help. What looks at first like a single bad night turns into years of dental work. That accident shapes the whole book, not because Telgemeier dwells on gore, but because the aftermath keeps pulling her back to waiting rooms when she would rather be anywhere else.

If you have never had major orthodontic work, the middle of this book will still make sense. If you have, you will wince in recognition. Braces go on, then come off, then go back on. There are cleanings and X rays and molds that taste terrible. There is surgery to uncover teeth that are not coming down right. There is headgear that is impossible to wear without feeling ridiculous. At one point she has to wear a retainer with false teeth attached, which solves one problem and creates five new social ones. Food gets stuck. Wires poke. Appointments get scheduled during school, so she misses class and has to explain where she was. The costs add up, the time adds up, and the embarrassment adds up faster than either.

Telgemeier is good at showing how medical stuff takes over a kid calendar. A grown up reads a treatment plan and thinks in months. A sixth grader thinks in sleepovers missed and pictures avoided. Raina smiles with her mouth closed for a long stretch. She learns to talk around sore spots. She dreads the orthodontist chair but also gets used to it, which might be worse. The assistants are nice, the dentist explains things, her parents try to keep it light, and still every visit reminds her that her mouth is a project. For readers who are living through braces right now, that stretch of the book probably feels less like a story and more like someone finally writing down what the afternoons are like.

The fall and the long fix

The opening moves fast, which fits how accidents feel. One minute Raina is a regular sixth grader worried about regular sixth grade things, the next she is dealing with ice packs and phone calls and a mirror she does not want to look into. Telgemeier draws San Francisco as hills and school buildings and kitchens where parents hover. You get the sense of a close family without a lot of speeches about it. Her mom reacts quickly. Her dad tries to stay calm. Her little sister watches with big eyes. Nobody gives a lecture about being careful on the playground. They just deal with it.

Then the book settles into the pattern that will carry it for years. Dentist, school, home, repeat. Teeth get pulled back into place with wires. Infections flare. Plans change. A tooth that seemed saved needs more work. A treatment that seemed finished needs a second round. Telgemeier does not turn this into a medical manual. She keeps the focus on what it steals. Raina misses out on small freedoms because her mouth hurts or because she is embarrassed to open it wide. She worries about how she looks in school photos. She worries about kissing, much later, in the abstract way middle schoolers worry about things years away. She worries people think she is fragile.

What I appreciated here is that Telgemeier lets the dental story be boring in places. Not boring to read, but boring in the lived sense. A lot of memoirs compress treatment into a montage. Here you feel the drag. Months pass. Seasons change in the backgrounds. Hairstyles shift a little. The braces stay. That repetition makes a point without stating it. Some problems do not resolve with one brave appointment. They resolve, if they do, through showing up again and again while life keeps going around you.

Orthodontia as a second school

There is a whole social world inside the orthodontist office, and Telgemeier sketches it with humor. Magazines from three months ago. The bib that sticks to your neck. The light that is too bright. The hygienist asking questions while her hands are in your mouth so you can only make sounds back. Kids who compare notes about rubber bands and wax like trading cards. Adults in the waiting room pretending not to be nervous. Raina becomes fluent in this place. She knows which chair squeaks. She knows how to breathe through her nose while impressions set. She learns to ask better questions as she gets older, which is a quiet marker of growing up.

The treatments themselves change as she ages, which keeps this section from feeling stuck. Early on it is all emergency repair and stabilization. Then it is classic braces with tightening appointments that leave her teeth aching for days. Then surgery enters the picture, scarier and harder to joke about. Then headgear, which she hates for obvious reasons. Then the retainer with fake teeth, which looks better in photos but feels strange and needs constant cleaning. Each phase has its own annoyances. Wax helps with one thing and not another. Soft foods get old. Talking clearly takes effort after adjustments.

Parents and money hover at the edges here in a way that feels honest for a family book. Telgemeier does not give a ledger of bills. She shows time off work, rides across town, waiting, rescheduling, and the tired patience of grown ups trying not to pass stress down to their kid. Raina notices some of it and misses the rest, which is exactly how it works when you are twelve. Later, in high school, she understands more about what her parents carried. That shift is subtle. No big thank you scene. Just a little more awareness in how she draws them listening.

Friends who fade and friends who stay

If the teeth are the plot you can see, friendship is the plot you feel. Raina starts sixth grade with a tight group of girls. They do Girl Scouts together. They talk about music and clothes and who likes who. They have inside jokes. After the accident, those friendships start to wobble. Part of it is the teeth. She feels different and acts a little guarded. Part of it is just middle school, where groups reshuffle for reasons no one can explain at the time.

Telgemeier handles mean girl dynamics without turning anyone into a cartoon villain. Some friends tease Raina about her appearance in ways that sting more because they used to be kind. Some leave her out of plans and then act surprised she is hurt. Some compete over boys or clothes or attention in ways that make every lunch feel like a test. Raina tries to keep up. She laughs at jokes that are aimed at her. She chases invitations that should not need chasing. It is painful to read because it is so familiar. Most of us have sat at a table where we were suddenly the extra person.

There are brighter spots too. New classmates drift in. A boy who is kind without making a show of it. A girl who likes to draw and does not care who sees. Art class becomes a refuge where skill matters more than looks. Telgemeier is careful not to present a single savior friend. Instead Raina builds a wider, looser circle over time. She learns to tell the difference between friends who enjoy her company and friends who enjoy having an audience. That lesson takes most of the book, which feels right. It took me years too.

One thing the book gets right is how hard it is to leave a bad friendship in middle school. Raina knows some of these girls are not good for her long before she stops sitting with them. But where else would she sit. The cafeteria is a map with no blank spaces. Starting over means eating alone for a while or hovering at the edge of a new group. Telgemeier shows those lonely lunches and hallway passes without milking them. You see Raina watching, deciding, trying again. When she finally spends less time with the old group, it does not happen with a speech. It happens because she has somewhere else she would rather be.

Boys, earthquakes, and everything else

Life does not pause for orthodontics, and the book keeps letting the outside world intrude. There are crushes that go nowhere and crushes that turn into brief, awkward dating. There are school dances where Raina is not sure if she wants to be asked or wants to be left alone. There are misunderstandings over notes passed in class and rumors that grow from nothing. Telgemeier treats these episodes lightly, which suits the age. Feelings are huge at the time and funny two years later, and both things can be true.

The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake appears as part of the background of her childhood in the Bay Area, a reminder that the memoir sits inside real history. It is not the focus, and Telgemeier does not inflate it. It arrives as shaking walls and scared adults and news coverage, then aftershocks in conversation. For younger readers now, that section might need a little context from a parent or teacher. For older readers, it places Raina childhood in time the way a song on the radio would. I liked that it is there without taking over. The book is about teeth and friends, and the ground shaking for a minute underlines how little control kids have over big events.

School itself moves from middle school restlessness to high school possibility. Teachers come and go, some kind, some strict, most busy. Grades matter but do not dominate the story. What matters more is where Raina finds traction. She likes to draw. She is funny in a low key way. She notices expressions and posture, which makes sense for someone who spent years watching faces to see if people were staring at her mouth. Those observations later turn into skill. You can see her eye getting sharper as the art gets more confident, though Telgemeier keeps the style friendly throughout.

Family stays steady through all this. Her parents argue sometimes and make up. Her sister Amara grows from a little kid into her own person with opinions. There are car rides and dinners and small jokes that repeat. Nobody in the family is perfect. Her mom can fuss. Her dad can go quiet. But home reads as safe, which matters because school often does not. Even when Raina is upset with her parents about appointments or rules, she knows they are on her side. That base lets her take more risks socially as she gets older.

Learning to draw through it

One of the most satisfying threads is Raina finding art as more than a hobby. Early on she doodles to pass time in waiting rooms. Later she takes classes, fills sketchbooks, and starts to think about comics as a form. Telgemeier does not present this as a sudden talent reveal. It is gradual. Practice pages. Copied characters. Original strips that are rough but hers. Friends who ask her to draw them. Teachers who notice and encourage without making it a burden.

This thread pays off in high school, where Raina meets more kids who are into making things. The social rules loosen a little. Looks still matter, of course. They always do at that age. But shared projects give her a different way to belong. Working on a poster together or swapping comics creates easier conversation than standing around at a dance. Telgemeier shows those rooms with warmth. Tables covered in markers. Someone laughing at a funny panel. Someone asking how she did a hand. For a kid who spent years feeling watched, being seen for what she can do must have felt like relief.

I also liked how the book handles self image without turning into an advice column. Raina does not wake up one day loving her smile. She gets to a point where she can smile without planning it first. That is a smaller claim and a truer one. The dental work helps, time helps, better friends help, art helps. No single fix does it. Telgemeier lets confidence arrive in pieces. A photo she does not hate. A laugh she does not cover. A day she forgets about her teeth until brushing at night. Those small wins stack.

Readers who draw will probably want to linger on process details. How faces change with a few lines. How backgrounds can stay simple when feelings are loud. Yue colors keep everything bright and clear, which suits a story told from a kid point of view even when the subject is pain. Blood from the fall is present but not lingering. Dental tools look real but not scary on the page. That balance is part of why the book works for ages 8 to 12 while still holding older readers.

What holds up and what creaks

Smile holds up best as a friendly, specific memoir about an ordinary problem that felt enormous at the time. The orthodontic timeline is detailed enough to trust. The friendship ups and downs ring true without cruelty for its own sake. The San Francisco setting gives it texture without becoming a travelogue. And the art stays readable for reluctant readers, with clear panels and expressive faces that carry jokes and hurt equally well. Teachers and librarians recommend it for a reason. It meets kids where they are, especially kids who feel self conscious about looks or who are stuck in friend groups that have turned sour.

A few things creaked for me, and I think they are worth naming. Because the book covers several years in 213 pages, some side characters blur together. A friend who matters in sixth grade vanishes by eighth with only a line to mark it. A crush appears, fizzles, and is gone. That compression is honest to memory, but it can leave you flipping back to remember who is who. Readers who want deep dives into any one friendship might feel shortchanged. The book moves the way school years move, fast in hindsight, and not every person gets a proper goodbye.

The episodic structure can also feel repetitive by design. Another appointment, another adjustment, another awkward lunch. Telgemeier varies the jokes and the setbacks, but the middle has a loop to it. I think that loop is the point, and younger readers going through the same thing may find comfort in it. As an adult reader, I sometimes wanted the story to push harder on class or access, on what this much care costs and who gets it. The book gestures at parent stress and time lost without exploring those pressures fully. That restraint fits a memoir aimed at middle grade readers, but it leaves questions open.

Age range matters here. The publisher lists ages 8 to 12, and that feels right. Older teens and adults can still enjoy it, but they may find the conflicts small and the resolutions gentle. There is no sharp edge, no big fallout scene that reframes everything. The worst behavior is social exclusion and teasing, handled without heavy punishment or neat apologies. Some readers will wish for stronger consequences for the meaner friends. I came to see the softness as intentional. Telgemeier is writing about how most friendships actually end at that age, not with a blowup but with drift, and how most confidence actually returns, not with triumph but with use.

If you are picking this for a kid, know that dental detail is frank but not graphic. There is blood at the start and talk of surgery later, plus images of braces and appliances that might make sensitive readers squirm. Nothing lingers to shock. The romance is chaste, limited to crushes and hand holding and wondering. Language is clean. Humor is warm. At 213 pages of comics, many kids finish it in an afternoon and then start Sisters right away, which continues the family story with Amara more central. That pairing works well together, and Guts later adds more about anxiety and health fears.

I finished Smile thinking about how rare it is to see a memoir about looking a little different that does not turn difference into a lesson for others. Raina is not brave to inspire the class. She is just trying to get through picture day without wanting to hide. Her smile at the end is not perfect in the advertisement sense. It is hers, worked for, waited for, drawn by someone who knows exactly what it cost. That lands harder than any speech could. You close the book and understand why so many copies in libraries look worn. Kids hand it to other kids and say, this happened to me too.