Facing Feelings: Inside the World of Raina Telgemeier – Based on the exhibition at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, curated by Anne Drozd. Foreword by Jenny E. Robb, Introduction by Scott McCloud
Graphix (Scholastic), 2025
How does Raina Telgemeier connect with readers? Her graphic novels convey the intensity of experiences shared, or remembered by, girls, women, and a broader audience. Facing Feelings is based on an in-depth look at her career at Ohio State University’s Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. It’s certainly not a coffee table book, meant to be displayed and occasionally admired. Each chapter focuses on the ingredients of Telgemeier life and artistic gifts, adding up to her modern classics.
The artist’s childhood and early career are thoughtfully examined, and the process of creation for individual works is demystified. There is no understatement here. As Scott McCloud justifiably claims in his introduction, “Raina Telgemeier has arguably increased the readership of comics in North America by a least a million.” Yet the straightforward expression of emotions does not necessarily result in distinguished works of art. On the other hand, reaching young readers by evading emotion, through an artificial imposition of distance, doesn’t work either. Telgemeier’s long and evolving identity as an artist has logical, and unexpected, elements, all considered in this volume. In the chapter, “What does fear look like,” Telgemeier’s image of a face dripping sweat and contorted in the emotion named, with braces protruding from her partly closed mouth. The text carefully analyzes how the artist produced this effect. Panels from Drama in full color are followed by black-and-white sketches from Guts. Both adults and children attended the exhibit and are the audience for this book, but it is clear that Telgemeier is committed to making her experiences available to young readers: “People simply didn’t understand, and mean kids picked up on that whiff of fear.” Of course, adults probably remember that truth all too well.
Anger gets its due as well. A selection from Smile evokes the unforgettable cruelty of middle school, with young Telgemeier’s face steaming with rage. In contrast, her tormentors smiling broadly as they categorize he as “nobody.” There is both compassion and a certain ironic distance in the author’s implicit advice: “I eventually had to learn to walk away when someone was being awful.” The torment of orthodontia due to a freak accident also involves junior high emotional turmoil, while the doctor who treated her was so kind that she changed his name to protect the innocent.
No artist springs from nowhere. Telgemeier’s artistic influences are carefully documented, helping readers to understand that books and visual art have as great an impact as events in determining an artist’s path forward. Some of her favorites will be unfamiliar to children and young adults. Here is their chance to see why Dennis the Menace became the code word for a certain kind of innocently destructive child, and why Lynda Barry is an icon to women comic artists. There are photos of Telgemeier’s drawing tools from first grade to adulthood, and her childhood picture of the Baby-Sitters Club characters, long before she would imprint her name on the series with pictures for the popular graphic novels based on the books. There’s a lot to like about Raina Telgemeier, and a lot to learn.
