If you do not have a child under the age of 16, or are not yourself under the age of 16, you might have no idea who Raina is. So it was with me. I called a friend with kids and said, "Have you heard of an author named Raina Telgemeier?" "Of course," she said, sounding bemused, as if I'd asked whether she was familiar with the automobile. "Like the Beatles for children," another parent friend explained.
Last spring, standing in the theater at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum in Columbus, Ohio, surveying the hundreds of kids and teenagers who had come to meet Raina, I realized the scale of my ignorance. Half an hour earlier, her fans had been standing on their seats, jumping up and down, waving their arms in the air, but now the long wait for autographs had begun. Everyone had been assigned a number and organized into subgroups so they could approach the signing table in shifts. Nobody seemed to mind especially—many were plunked down on the floor, contentedly rereading her books, as an hour passed, then an hour and a half.
One mother and her 8-year-old daughter had come from Philadelphia. Another family had driven up from Tennessee. “We would go anywhere to see Raina,” one parent said.
“The magic of Raina is real,” confirmed a school librarian who’d brought her daughter to meet Telgemeier here, at a public event celebrating the author’s first retrospective. Every spring, the librarian told me, she runs a report to determine which of the library’s books have been checked out the most. It was June, so she could share that, once again, “four out of the top five are Raina books. Children reread those books over and over and over.”
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة March 2024 من The Atlantic.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة March 2024 من The Atlantic.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
The Dark Origins of Impressionism
How the violence and deprivation of war inspired light-filled masterpieces
The Magic Mountain Saved My Life
When I was young and adrift, Thomas Manns novel gave me a sense of purpose. Today, its vision is startlingly relevant.
The Weirdest Hit in History
How Handel's Messiah became Western music's first classic
Culture Critics
Nick Cave Wants to Be Good \"I was just a nasty little guy.\"
ONE FOR THE ROAD
What I ate growing up with the Grateful Dead
Teaching Lucy
She was a superstar of American education. Then she was blamed for the country's literacy crisis. Can Lucy Calkins reclaim her good name?
A BOXER ON DEATH ROW
Iwao Hakamada spent an unprecedented five decades awaiting execution. Each day he woke up unsure whether it would be his last.
HOW THE IVY LEAGUE BROKE AMERICA
THE MERITOCRACY ISN'T WORKING. WE NEED SOMETHING NEW.
Against Type
How Jimmy O Yang became a main character
DISPATCHES
HOW TO BUILD A PALESTINIAN STATE There's still a way.