By Raina Telgemeier
Raina Telgemeier's true story of the night she fell and wrecked her two front teeth, and the long, awkward, funny stretch of growing up that followed.
One night in sixth grade, Raina trips and falls and knocks out her two front teeth. What follows is years of it: surgery, braces, headgear, a retainer with fake teeth, then getting knocked again just when things are healing. Around all of that, ordinary life keeps happening, an earthquake, first crushes, a group of friends who tease more than they should. It's the whole clumsy business of figuring out who you are while your own mouth won't cooperate, and Raina tells it so warmly and so funnily that a child who swore they hated reading finishes it in an afternoon.
This is the book that launched a whole generation of children into graphic memoirs, and it still works because it's so exactly true. Every child has some version of the thing they're self-conscious about, and Raina's happens to be her teeth, on display right in the middle of her face. Watching her survive it, and slowly stop caring what the mean friends think, is powerful. The format pulls a reluctant reader straight through, and the true-story honesty is why they hand it to a friend the second they're done.