Smile, by Raina Telgemeier

Does anybody capture the anguish of being a teenage girl as perfectly as RT? I don't think so- the frenemies, unimaginably annoying younger siblings, the desperate attempts to seem grown up, to seem cool, burgeoning boy issues, school-yard politics...The surprise attacks that the 13 year old body launches- sudden boobs, sudden hips, sudden spots; everything at once, and at the time when you feel like the ugliest, freakiest, weirdest little specimen to ever don a backpack and attempt to survive state school.

Smile, like Sisters  is very much an autobiography. Book Raina (like real life 1980s Raina) needs braces to correct her overbite- monstrous headgear on top of everything else weighing on the middle-school mind. After the traumatic trip to the orthodontist "let's make a mould of your mouth by filling it with this disgusting pink guk" (been there), Raina has an accident on her way home from a Girl Scouts meeting, knocking out her front two teeth. Impossibly self-conscious anyway, she dreads to think what her friends will say about her teeth. This fall is the beginning of 5 years of tooth related trauma that will see her up to the end of High School.

Best visual representation on anaesthetic ever?

Not the best book for the tooth-squeamish. Thinking about some of the procedures (reattaching, root-canalling, removing and rearranging) made me feel a bit sick. Teeth (the loss, damage, otherwise defacing) of teeth is the thing that makes me shiver more than anything else in the world. Other than that, anybody who has even been a teenage human will be able to relate to this in some way. Even if you managed to escape braces and have never knocked out teeth. Smile does a really good job of illustrating just how toxic female friendships can be, especially at school, and especially friendships that seem to have gone on for too long to ever feel like you can break it off. Raina's friends that she moved up to High School with are catty and unsupportive and take every opportunity to laugh at those they see as weaker than themselves. It's all about insecurity. Making others feel worse to drown out the noise of your own inferiority complex.

Who hasn't had a friend that they secretly wanted to punch in the mouth?

I love the message of this book; it's okay to feel marginalised and to worry about what people think of you, because without that, you'd never get to that moment where you realise it doesn't matter and your 'friends' are idiots and you're just going to be yourself because you're brilliant. You have to go through the fear and the self consciousness and the feeling inferior because that's how you learn that You. Are. Awesome. And yes, being a teen is hard; it's excruciating and unfair and it seems like these embarrassing injustices will never end. But it's the time that you begin to form your personality properly. You start to see what you're genuinely good at, who makes you happy, what makes you special. Which makes it all worth it.

That thing where you stand up for yourself and continue to be awesome for the rest of time.

I love Raina's work- it's so honest, so charming and so full of character, and so distinctive. The graphic novel world has celebrated a brilliant new talent comprehensively enough, but it's also gained a proper classic, role model character at the same time. Love it, would recommend to anyone and everyone, whether they like Graphic Novels or not.

The Bubble Wrap Boy, by Phil Earle

The Bubble Wrap Boy is the story of vertically challenged Charlie Han, painfully uncool, thoroughly clumsy and resigned to the fact that he has close to a Full House on the “Racial Stereotypes” Bingo sheet. Living with a desperately overprotective mum and a silent chef father, Charlie struggles with gangs, bullies, ritual humiliation, constant disappointment and scorn on a daily basis and has nobody to talk to about it. Apart from his companion in lonely weirdness Linus, AKA Sinus due to his immense nose. Thrown together by their mutual friendlessness, Charlie is unfortunately quite dismissive of Linus, believing he deserves a higher calibre of friend. When Charlie discovers his passion, his one talent in life is Skateboarding, he neglects Linus in favour of his new hobby. His new hobby that would send his mother through the roof if she ever found out about it.

Charlie is just such a brilliant character; hopelessly uncool, unduly optimistic about suddenly becoming cool, resolute, caring and hugely stubborn. I really felt like I understood Charlie- his mixture of anger and guilt and love is on the one hand quite typical of teens, but it also singles Charlie out as being quite unique in the way that he deals with these emotions. He has been lied to by people that he trusts, he’s angry, but he has his own secrets too so it’s not as if he can legitimately claim the moral high ground. He has the ammunition to cause his mother a world of emotional pain and chooses not to. He keeps both of their secrets to save his family from getting hurt.

I really liked too how Charlie begrudgingly learned his lessons as he went along, even though they were painful or inconvenient. He learns when to get mad and when to stay quiet. The value of true friendship versus the fickle promise of popularity. The fact that you have to work hard to reap the rewards of anything. That sometimes you don’t have to be the best. That it’s not until you’ve won approval that you realise it’s of very little value. That adults do strange and inexplicable things for reasons only understood by themselves.

This book does a brilliant job of rationalising adult behaviour that seems to baffle teens. It gives reasons, however unsatisfying or misguided, for the things that grownups do. Sometimes it’s the wrong thing done for the right reasons but it shows too that adults might not always be able to explain their behaviour. It shows that these mysterious creatures are people too.

It’s emotional and heart wrenching at the same time as being hilariously funny. Charlie’s brush with death during his brief foray into amateur dramatics had me in stitches, and his brilliant internal monologue is so full of personality. Sometimes he’s seething, sometimes he’s

overflowing with empathy. It’s a joy to read because in many ways it is such an ordinary story- families, secrets and unfulfilment and guilt are all very ordinary themes. It’s just told in such a way that the reader can’t help but become caught up in Charlie’s complicated family and his clashing emotions.

My only gripe with the book is the Penguin cover. It’s ok for the cover to show Charlie as being Oriental in appearance! I can’t remember the last time I read any book where the protagonist was British Chinese. In fact I don’t think I have read another one at all. That should be celebrated and evident, rather than limited to the text. Charlie just happens to be born to Chinese parents. It’s not particularly integral to the plot, it’s just who he is! This is exactly kind of circumstantial diversity that needs to become the norm. Even if one day there are fictional armies of diverse and representative characters, what's the point if we’re just going to illustrate them as all looking the same?