Smile!

Smile is a new graphic novel by cartoonist Raina Tegemeier about dental adventures / misadventures when she was a young lass. Smile is published in full color by Scholastic, but it's not just a great graphic novel for kids, it's a great, funny, wonderfully drawn graphic novel for anyone who has ever been to the dentist.

I've never had braces, but I did have a lot of dental work done a few years ago to correct / fix my years of bad dental hygiene from my youth. I went to the dentist regularly as a kid (always had lots of cavities), but didn't brush or floss my teeth as much as I should have. As an adult I've been better about brushing my teeth regularly, but damage was already done, so as I said, I needed a LOT of dental work. I'm probably the biggest baby when it comes to going to the dentist because I HATE all the having to keep your mouth open really wide, the scrapping and the drilling that goes on.

So reading Smile, with Raina's accounts of all she went through having to get and wear braces, getting implants, and other corrective dental surgery over her very important pre-teen years, made me recall my dentist visits and made me glad that I didn't also have to endure braces on top of all the other dental trauma I've been through. In Smile, Raina Telgemeier doesn't just show how difficult having to wear braces is when you're a young teenager, but also hows difficult it is to do so when you're going through so many other life changes, but she does this all in a highly entertaining, positive fashion, making Smile a great graphic novel (200 pages for only $10.99) for everyone.