Poet Ogden Nash said, “Some tortures are physical/And some are mental,/But the one that is both/Is dental.” Raina Telgemeier tells of her own particular journey of adolescent woe which came in the form of a seemingly endless tangle of dentists, endontists, periodontists, orthodonists, with their promises to perfect her teeth.
In sixth grade, Telgemeier got braces to fix a run-of-the-mill overbite. Then, while horsing around with her friends, she fell, and knocked out her two front teeth. This one misstep plunged her into a four-year ordeal of painful procedures, torturous surgeries, not-to-mention a perpetually changing appearance at a time when every kid is having a crisis of confidence. (As if puberty isn’t traumatic enough!) Follow this lost heroine as she battles pimples, overcomes destructive friendships with hypercritical mean girls, endures painful oral surgeries, and finally finds her way to feeling at home in her own skin when she reaches high school.
This story hit particularly close to home for me. My daughter, at the start of sixth grade, tripped and fell flat on her face while playing with her friends on a Sunday afternoon. She got the exact same injury as Raina; the front two teeth were knocked out. We rushed her to a dentist, a neighbor who opened her clinic for us to handle the emergency. She managed to reconnect the teeth back at the exact spot where they used to be; and over the next few months, the teeth healed and took root enough for her to start eating normal foods. But the teeth still needed work, specifically new crowns. Since crowns can only be changed AFTER any corrective braces are removed, she is currently undergoing correction. I got my daughter this book when she was recovering from the initial injury. Raina’s complicated journey worried her, but she enjoyed the book, nonetheless.
The artwork is all straight lines and solid bold colours. Raina is an expert at capturing motion and expressions. The basic character design is simple, but she uses that simple structure to bring out the most complex emotions very effectively.
Strongly recommend this book.