Smile

Raina Telgemeier's Smile is a funny, honest comic-book memoir for 10 year olds about a girl who trips in the dark and smashes her two front teeth.

What happens

Raina is eleven and in sixth grade. She's just been told she needs braces, which feels bad enough. Then she races a friend home one evening, falls flat on the pavement, and one front tooth comes out altogether (the other gets shoved right up into her gum).

What follows is years of dentists. Root canals, headgear, a retainer with two fake teeth on it, braces off and then back on again. Every time she thinks she's nearly there, another kind of "dontist" turns up with more news.

It's her own story, told in full-colour comic panels with her thoughts in the captions. The pictures do a LOT of the work. You see her go bright red when the boy she likes says hi, and her friends falling about laughing at a sleepover makeover. Big sound effects (WHAM! OW! BOOM!) keep it moving, and most readers will probably finish it in a sitting or two.

Alongside the teeth there's everything else about growing up. Crushes. Spots. A Valentine's card she has no idea what to do with. An earthquake that rattles the whole house while she hides under the table with her little sister.

Who hasn't felt, at that age, that their face was the only thing anyone could see?

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Raina gets older across the book, from sixth grade to her first years of high school, and the worries grow up with her. There's blood when the teeth go, and again at one very painful dental visit where she faints. There's crush talk, a daydreamed kiss and a game of spin the bottle (she sits it out). Her friends tease her for years, and one prank in front of the whole school is truly humiliating.

It's drawn in a soft cartoon style and the book is always on her side. A reader who's nervous about the dentist might find some pages close to home. One who's starting to notice how friends treat each other will find plenty here worth talking about.

What to read next

If they'd like another girl on the edge of sixth grade who cringes at everything she's ever done, try The Agony of Alice. It's all words this time, not pictures. Alice is eleven, about to move house, and can't stop remembering her most embarrassing moments.