Tighten, tighten, tighten. Braces are a common and painful experience for many teenagers. But when author Raina Telgemeier fell at age 11 and knocked out her two front teeth, she went through a lot more dental struggles than your typical teenager.
This experience of growing into a teenager while dealing with dental adversities became the center of her first autobiographical graphic novel, Smile.
Now, Telgemeier smiles softly as she recounts the story to the crowd at the Coppell Arts Center.
The Cozby Library and Community Commons hosted Raina Telgemeier’s Life in Comics on Saturday, its biggest author event to date, to celebrate its 50th anniversary.
“Writing comics has always been my way of telling stories and being able to tell stories about emotions and feelings and things that matter to me is just the greatest privilege I have ever had,” Telgemeier said. “I’m so grateful that my readers are there to engage with me back and forth.”
According to adult services librarian Emily Plagens, this event was a once in a lifetime opportunity for the library. Telgemeier’s books are frequently checked out at the library and loved by people of all ages.
“Graphic novels have been kind of maligned or looked down on for a while by some people who don’t think it’s real reading or think that it’s sort of just fluffy easy kid stuff,” Plagens said. “I think we’re finally in a time and place where more people are understanding that graphic novels can have real literary merit and really have a place on library shelves and in people’s reading and lives.”
Her books appeal to people of all ages through the relatable and awkward moments she writes about growing up. For her audience, her work allows them to feel less alone in their own situations.
“When she gets braces, I was like, ‘oh, wait that’s so cool,’” attendee Jane Lambert said. “She really describes it how it actually happens so that made me more comfortable getting them.”
Telgemeier’s love for comics stemmed from her childhood love of classics, such as Calvin and Hobbes and Down the Street. She followed her passion and began to create small 12-page comics that she sold at comic conventions. At one of these conventions, David Saylor from Graphix, Scholastic’s comic branch, took interest in her initial works and invited her to a meeting to discuss what kind of comics she could make for Graphix. When she mentioned growing up reading Ann M. Martin’s The Baby-Sitter’s Club, Scholastic offered her a position to make a graphic novel version of the series.
“Their eyes lit up and they were like ‘you know, that is our series, we own the rights to those characters and those stories. What if you turn those stories into comics?’ and I was like ‘This is the coolest job,’” Telgemeier said. “It’s like writing a screenplay adaptation of something because you’re imagining everything else, what does it look like? What about the character interactions? Everything.”
After she remade Claudia and Mean Janine in 2008, she moved on to making her own books. Guts is Telgemeier’s most vulnerable project to date. The book is about Telgemeier’s anxiety as a child after she caught the stomach bug in fifth grade. At the event, Telgemeier discussed how even though writing Guts was difficult, her audience was able to relate to the anxious feelings she felt.
“I started having anxiety, bad panic attacks and they were triggered by really small things,” Telgemeier said. “I looked normal, but on the inside I was always doing something catastrophic. People would raise their hands and be like, ‘could you talk about your anxiety some more?’ and it came up so many times that I realized this is what people want to hear next from me.”
At the Coppell Arts Center, Telgemeier also announced two new projects: The Cartoonists Club, a book she is writing in collaboration with fellow cartoonist, Scott McCloud, to be released April 1, and Feeling Feelings, an art book organized around feelings in her books.
At the conclusion of the event, Telgemeier encouraged her readers to express their feelings through creativity and share their stories with the world.
“Just don’t wait,” Telgemeier said “Tell your story. It can be making comics, it can be writing plays and performing with your friends or making videos and posting them, just whatever feels good to you. It doesn’t matter as long as you are able to express yourself and how you are feeling and communicating with your people.”
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