by Janet Chan Raina Telgemeier does it again with her award-winning graphic novel, Smile. This autobiographical novel shares her experiences with a dental injury and dental treatments that span her middle school and early high school years. Raina’s journey starts with her crossbite and need for braces. Before she gets her braces on, an accidental fall results in damage to her two front teeth. This leads to her years long journey of dental surgery, retainers with false teeth, and headgear. In one scene, a young Raina experiences anxiety while the dentist is explaining the procedure to her. Through the speech… Read More
Growing Pangs
awaiting review
Medical Mentions Book Reviews IV
Where to buy: https://bookshop.org/lists/recently-reviewed-on-graphicmedicine-org Medical Mentions is a group of graphic works. The graphic works reviewed here are books whose primary topics are not medical, and yet they cover a medical topic with some depth at some point in the work. The rest of the work might be fictional or nonfictional, while the medical portion is often technical and five pages or more. The reviewer will usually neither recommend nor discourage reading the work, except when the rest of the work is deemed outstanding or terrible, respectively. Typically, six graphic works will be part of the review with one paragraph… Read More
The Cage
Guest review by John Swogger. For the full post, visit his blog. The Cage is (Rinko Endo’s) second complete comic work, and shares the same innovative approach as her Aggression Management Manga. Sub-titled “My Orthodontic Memoir”, it recounts her childhood diagnosis of malocclusion and the subsequent trials and tribulations of living with an orthodontic chin cap. I had a number of friends when I was a kid with various orthodontic retainers, braces and headgear. Beyond these, there’s a whole grim panoply of orthodontic appliances – power chains, coil springs, twin blocks, plates or retainers, facemasks, cervical headgear, headgear helmets, lip bumpers, palate expanders, elastics,… Read More