Smile

Telgemeier, R., & Yue, S. (2010). Smile. Broadway, New York: Graphix.

Raina is a 6^th grade student who just wanted to fit in.  After a Girl Scouts meeting, they were dropping Raina off at home and the girls decided to run to the door.  Riana tripped, fell, and lost her two front teeth.  Raina has to wear braces, headgear, and have various treatment in a span of four years.  During those years, she goes through many obstacles that teenagers go through.  Through her adolescent years she goes through the typical issues like crushes on boys, zits, insecurities, and bullying by her own friends.  When she enters high school, she makes new friends.  She finally gets her final surgery and feels comfortable with her smile.  I really enjoyed this story.  It made me feel like I was back in middle school feeling the way she did as she had her first pimples, crushes, and just wanting to fit in.  This book is age-appropriate for middle school students from the ages of 9 and older.  I think a good follow-up book is El Deafo.  They both are graphic novels that are for the same age group of adolescents that deal with real life issues of middle school students. As a teacher, I would have students write a story about themselves in a comic strip or graphic novel format.  A good website would be http://www.toondoo.com/.  I could also have them give the story Smile an alternate ending and use http://www.scholastic.com/graphix/createcomic.htm?theme=smile.  They would be able to incorporate the characters from the story. The theme of this story is adolescent issues, middle school, dental health, friendships, and pride/self-esteem.  The author is the character in this story and tell her story of when she had dental issues through her middle school years.  She uses humor  and figurative language as she is writing her story like “All I Want for Christmas is my two front teeth.”(103) to capture the audience attention.  Her images and text foretell events in the story.  She uses dark pages in the book to tell that she is hallucinating, while she is getting her teeth extracted.  The author wrote a well-written plot that will keep you engaged through-out the story