Guts by Raina Telgemeier

Guts is the 3rd autobiographical graphic novel written by Raina Teigenmeier. The storyline revolves around Raina’s stress and anxiety around throwing up and feeling sick and how she was able to overcome those feelings.

At the beginning of the book, Raina and her mom end up with a stomach bug. They both get very sick and vomit a lot. It was so upsetting for Raina that she begins to get extremely worried every time her stomach feels a little off. When this happens, her thoughts begin to spiral out of control. She begins to miss a lot of school because of her stomach aches. Her parents decide to take her to a therapist. The therapist works with her to find the root cause of her worry and stress.

Throughout the storyline, Raina is spending time with her friend Jane. Jane and Raina are continuously teased by another girl in their class, Michelle. Jane and Michelle eventually become friends, and Raina has to work through her anger and worry over this new friendship. She works with her therapist on techniques she can use when she is feeling upset.

Raina decides to do a class presentation on how her anxiety presents itself, and she teaches the class the techniques the therapist taught her. Her presentation is received well by her classmates. In the end, Michelle and Raina find common ground with stomach problems and become friends.

The first two books in this series revolved a lot around disrespectful behaviors and boy/girl relationships. This book takes a different approach to middle school problems. While I still feel this book is written for an older audience, it does not have as many instances of inappropriate behaviors.

There is still a level of disrespect for authority when Raina rolls her eyes every time her grandma tells a story. Her sister is always shown sleeping when grandma tells a story as well. Personally, I would like to have better behavior modeled for my kids when interacting with their grandparents or parents.

There continues to be a lot of talk about puberty in this novel. However, it is never approached from an educational or adult standpoint. Puberty is thrown around at school by the girls when they want to tease each other. If a girl is crying, the others will laugh and point and say it must be because of puberty.

I do really appreciate the way the friendship problems were solved at the end of the story, however. Raina is able to use the skills she learned from her therapist to form a relationship with Michelle. They talk nicely to each other and generally support one another. It was a refreshing example of friendship in a series full of unhealthy friendships.

Sexual Content
The only area I would consider sexual content is in the repeated mention of puberty.

Language
There continues to be a lot of name calling-nerds, weird, poopie diaper baby, crazy, weirdo, babyist, stupid, dumb, pencil puke
Bodily functions-barf, poo
Disrespectful-hate your guts.

Questionable Behaviors
There are a lot of graphic vomiting pictorial representations
Boys making armpit farting noises
A kid threw up on the playground, and the entire class ran to the window to point and laugh
Burping the alphabet
Rolling eyes at grandma
A friend shared that her dad gets drunk a lot and yells. While this is a real problem, having more support for kids reading this book would be helpful

This review was written by Tricia Knuston. To learn more about Tricia, click HERE.

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