Why my daughters love rereading Raina Telgemeier’s graphic novels

When you’re a parent who loves to read—or as the case is for me, happily, makes his living from reading—the first time you see your child become obsessed with an author is a genuine thrill. For both of my daughters, that author was Raina Telgemeier. The graphic novelist, best known for her trio of memoirs about her anxious preteen years, Smile, Sisters, and Guts, is referred to in my house simply as “Raina.” Apparently we’re not alone, as Jordan Kisner’s profile this week makes clear. Telgemeier is beloved for the way she captures an essential part of growing up: the fear that you and you alone are strange. My daughters read her books again and again, sometimes finishing and then flipping right back to the first page. We have multiple copies of most of them, now completely tattered. Their intense love of these titles reminds me of a powerful aspect of reading—one that adults often end up forgetting.

First, here are four stories from The Atlantic’s Books section:

Many of us read solely to be exposed to newness. Even on the rare occasions when I revisit books these days, it’s to find novel aspects of texts I first read when I was young. But for my children, Telgemeier’s books were special because they became so familiar. They clutched them like comfort objects. They didn’t so much read Smile as return to........

© The Atlantic