📚 Book🎬 Tweens · Ages 11–13Graphic Novels / Comics

Smile (2010)

About This Book

Raina falls face-first onto the pavement in sixth grade and knocks out her two front teeth, beginning a years-long dental nightmare of surgeries, braces, headgear, and fake teeth that coincides with the already brutal social landscape of middle school. Telgemeier draws with clean, expressive lines that capture every cringe, every humiliation, and every small victory with equal emotional precision. The book is compulsively readable and painfully relatable.

Why It's a Classic

Raina Telgemeier almost single-handedly launched the modern middle grade graphic novel boom, proving to publishers that autobiographical comics for young readers could sell in enormous numbers and connect with audiences who had never picked up a graphic novel before. Her genius is in the details: the specific shade of embarrassment when a retainer falls out at lunch, the way friendship dynamics shift invisibly until you are suddenly on the outside, the confusing mix of dread and hope that defines every orthodontist appointment. The memoir format gives the story an emotional authority that fiction struggles to match, because readers know this actually happened to a real person who survived it and made art from it. Smile has sold over four million copies and permanently expanded what the children's book market considers commercially viable.

Fun Fact

Telgemeier originally published Smile as a webcomic, posting pages online for free before Scholastic approached her about turning it into a book. The dental trauma depicted in the book is entirely real, and Telgemeier's dental work lasted from sixth grade through high school. She has said that drawing the book was therapeutic but also difficult because she had to relive every embarrassing moment in detail.

Parent Note

The book deals with middle school social cruelty, including friends who are manipulative and unkind, depicted honestly through a kid's perspective. The dental procedures are drawn in enough detail to make some readers squeamish. The emotional content is age-appropriate and deeply validating for any kid navigating the turbulence of early adolescence.