Meet the author

Raina Telgemeier.

Writer & illustrator · United States · b. 1977

Raina Telgemeier: the defining contemporary middle-grade graphic novelist — Smile, Sisters, Guts, Drama, plus the Baby-Sitters Club graphic-novel adaptations — for ages 8–13.

Raina Telgemeier is an American cartoonist born in 1977, one of the defining voices in contemporary middle-grade graphic novels and a near-universal staple of the 8–13 shelf. Her autobiographical and semi-autobiographical books, Smile (2010), Sisters (2014), Guts (2019), Drama (2012), are warmly drawn, emotionally precise stories about braces, dentistry mishaps, sibling friction, anxiety, school plays, and figuring out how to be yourself in middle school. She also adapted the first four Baby-Sitters Club novels by Ann M. Martin into graphic-novel form, kicking off the long-running BSC graphic-novel line. Telgemeier has won multiple Eisner Awards and her books have been on the NYT bestseller list for years. The benchmark contemporary middle-grade graphic novelist.