Guts: A Graphic Novel

Raina Telgemeier

- 4.6 • 1.5K Ratings

- $7.99

- $7.99

A true story from Raina Telgemeier, the #1 New York Timesbestselling, multiple Eisner Award-winning author of Smile, Sisters, Drama, and Ghosts!Raina wakes up one night with a terrible upset stomach. Her mom has one, too, so it's probably just a bug. Raina eventually returns to school, where she's dealing with the usual highs and lows: friends, not-friends, and classmates who think the school year is just one long gross-out session. It soon becomes clear that Raina's tummy trouble isn't going away... and it coincides with her worries about food, school, and changing friendships. What's going on?Raina Telgemeier once again brings us a thoughtful, charming, and funny true story about growing up and gathering the courage to face -- and conquer -- her fears.

APPLE BOOKS REVIEW

We all struggle with our emotions sometimes, but kid-friendly graphic novelist Raina Telgemeier (Sisters) makes that struggle feel a little less lonely. In Guts, she shares her own childhood struggles with anxiety and how therapy helped her progress. Telgemeier’s expressive art and spot-on depiction of childhood stressors allowed us to step right into young Raina’s shoes. Laugh-out-loud funny and all too relatable, it’s sure to make readers of any age feel more comfortable talking about their fears, and closes with a tender note from Telgemeier herself. We wish that a book like this had been around when we were growing up!

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY MAY 13, 2019

With disarming candor and in her now instantly recognizable panel artwork, Eisner Award winner Telgemeier weaves a tangle of personal preadolescent traumas into another compelling graphic memoir. A bout of stomach flu and some unpleasant encounters with food create in young Raina's mind a swirling miasma of fear that she'll throw up. This anxiety blights her school days (she freezes during a class presentation with her best friend and lashes out at a bullying schoolmate) and extends into fears about sickness and schoolwork, and frustrations with her raucous household. Telgemeier frames the girl's panic attacks accessibly as sickly circles of green crowded with big, blocky words ("pain drowning choking death bad at math"). Raina's parents take her to see therapist Lauren, who helps her to ground her fears and gain enough emotional strength to reconcile herself to changing friend dynamics, and an IBS diagnosis clarifies the way that mind and body can intertwine. Moments of elementary school drama are portrayed with credibility, and the story both normalizes therapy and shows a child developing useful coping mechanisms for anxiety in a way that will reassure, even inspire, readers. Ages 8 12. , Correction: A previous version of this review misstated the characters as being in middle school.

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