Technolandy

Day 77 (of 2025/26) Facing Feelings: inside the world of @RainaTelgemeier

I love that Raina has helped normalize graphic novels as part of a readers journey… comic books are what led me to become an English/History double major and helped me build the capacity to transform the words on a page to pictures in the mind… a reminder that this is not a skill all neurologies have and part of why many hate reading… when I saw this curation based on an exhibition, I impulse purchased it right away. I love that curation of works like this (highlights in my library include works about Gary Larsen and Bill Waterson and Carl Barks..) so this easily had to be the first book I wanted to highlight in my ‘first school day of the month book share’!

This is gonna be a great framework for my scaleable unit for English Language Arts for students to access as a resource as part of our provincial online learning school… and a club to get some creations created for our third now-annual comic con in June!

Hard to believe Smile is about to be old enough to get a drivers license…

An amazing ‘conversation’ with Raina gives great insights into the journey of getting graphic novels their own shelf in many libraries – not just the comics I kept in bins for students (and staff as well as some parents) to borrow – whether in my library, classroom or admin office…

And a fabulous glimpse into her childhood and early artworks – copying and creating styles! 

I love how newspaper comics are admitted as strong influences on her… 

Amazing shares on how she reveals feelings on a 2-D medium. Great way to influence the next generation of cartoonists.. Facing Feelings works both as a retrospective and a quiet manifesto. It shows as an exhibition as to how Raina Telgemeier’s work didn’t just popularize graphic novels—it legitimized them as emotionally sophisticated, literate texts that belong at the centre of young readers’ lives. The book makes visible the craft behind the comfort: how facial expressions, pacing, panel choice, and restraint can communicate anxiety, belonging, and resilience just as powerfully as prose.

What stood out most is how intentionally Raina connects process to feeling—inviting readers (and future creators) to see that emotions aren’t “added” to stories, they’re designed. By pairing her personal history, early experiments, and reflections on the industry’s slow shift toward acceptance, this book becomes both inspiration and instruction. It quietly validates the readers who found themselves through Smile, Drama, or Guts, and it gives educators and young artists a shared language for talking about storytelling, identity, and access.

Ultimately, Facing Feelings reinforces why graphic novels matter—not as a stepping stone to “real reading,” but as a powerful medium in their own right, capable of meeting diverse neurologies where they are and inviting them forward. It’s a book about making feelings visible—and about making space.

If the medium is the message, I can’t wait to see what Raina is going to share next!