Telgemeier clearly remembers how it feels to be fourteen, as well as how it feels to have and be a sister, and she adeptly relays those emotions and experience though accessible dialogue and expressive depiction of characters. That journey is the anchor for this graphic novel memoir, which flashes back through the girls’ relationship, contentious from its earliest days. Now she’s fourteen, and she and Amara still fight frequently while they occasionally establish common ground, such as their mutual mixed feelings about the arrival of their little brother, more often they bicker over colored pencils, pet snakes, and punch bugs-a real problem when the girls, their brother, and their mom take a road trip from San Francisco to Colorado for a family reunion.

At four years old, Raina wanted a new sister, badly-and then she got one. Copyright 2014 Booklist.īulletin for the Center. With a sizable first print run, Telgemeier’s publisher is counting on a repeat performance. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: New York Times best-selling Smile continues to be one of the most widely loved kid’s graphic novels in recent history. Telgemeier’s art complements her writing to great effect, offering a cheerful, vivid cartoon simplicity that allows readers to instantly engage even as it leaves room for deeper truths to take hold. Telgemeier keeps the surface story popping and zippy, even through the constant sparring between the awkwardly adolescent Raina and her firecracker younger sister, a relationship that will prove profoundly familiar to many readers. This may sound dark and heavy, but it actually exists only as an underlying reality. While the focus of the story explores Raina’s combative relationship with her younger sister, Amara, it is in some sense about families themselves, the tensions they breed, the unspoken worries that swirl through households, and the ways an older generation’s unintended example echoes through younger generations.

Cleverly, the trip is interspersed with flashbacks that flesh out the emotional background and neatly dovetail with Smile. Raina boards the family minivan traveling from California to Colorado to visit relatives, sharing a charged and eventful trip with her mother, sister, and younger brother. The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (09/14)īooklist - *Starred Review* Telgemeier’s follow-up to Smile (2010)-possibly the only universally embraced graphic novel on the planet-offers the same thoughtful perspective while also creating a slightly more mature and complex tone. Video Preview: Accelerated Reader Information: Companion to the graphic novel memoir, Smile. Raina can't wait to be a big sister, but once Amara is born, she realizes things won't be how she expected. ill., 21 cm.Īutobiographical comic books, strips, etc

Raina telgemeier sister amara