Bound To Stay Bound

Booklist - 06/01/2014 *Starred Review* Telgemeier’s follow-up to Smile (2010)—possibly the only universally embraced graphic novel on the planet—offers the same thoughtful perspective while also creating a slightly more mature and complex tone. Raina boards the family minivan traveling from California to Colorado to visit relatives, sharing a charged and eventful trip with her mother, sister, and younger brother. Cleverly, the trip is interspersed with flashbacks that flesh out the emotional background and neatly dovetail with Smile. While the focus of the story explores Raina’s combative relationship with her younger sister, Amara, it is in some sense about families themselves, the tensions they breed, the unspoken worries that swirl through households, and the ways an older generation’s unintended example echoes through younger generations. This may sound dark and heavy, but it actually exists only as an underlying reality. Telgemeier keeps the surface story popping and zippy, even through the constant sparring between the awkwardly adolescent Raina and her firecracker younger sister, a relationship that will prove profoundly familiar to many readers. Telgemeier’s art complements her writing to great effect, offering a cheerful, vivid cartoon simplicity that allows readers to instantly engage even as it leaves room for deeper truths to take hold. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: New York Times best-selling Smile continues to be one of the most widely loved kid’s graphic novels in recent history. With a sizable first print run, Telgemeier’s publisher is counting on a repeat performance. - Copyright 2014 Booklist.

Bulletin for the Center... - 09/01/2014 At four years old, Raina wanted a new sister, badly-and then she got one. Now she’s fourteen, and she and Amara still fight frequently; while they occasionally establish common ground, such as their mutual mixed feelings about the arrival of their little brother, more often they bicker over colored pencils, pet snakes, and punch bugs-a real problem when the girls, their brother, and their mom take a road trip from San Francisco to Colorado for a family reunion. That journey is the anchor for this graphic novel memoir, which flashes back through the girls’ relationship, contentious from its earliest days. Telgemeier clearly remembers how it feels to be fourteen, as well as how it feels to have and be a sister, and she adeptly relays those emotions and experience though accessible dialogue and expressive depiction of characters. While the artwork breaks no new ground, the approachable style Telgemeier used in Smile (BCCB 3/10) successfully conveys this particular chapter in her coming of age, and photos of the real-life Raina and Amara add an engaging point of further access. Her streamlined, cartoony style is easygoing and flexible, effectively representing time shifts and capturing the rare but important moments where the sisters draw on each other for strength: characters grow and change but remain recognizable, just like Raina and Amara over the course of their road trip. Give this to any kid with siblings and wait for the knowing nods, sighs, and laughter to begin. AA - Copyright 2014 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.

School Library Journal - 07/01/2014 Gr 4 Up—Telgemeier has returned with a must-have follow-up to Smile (Scholastic, 2010) that is as funny as it is poignant, and utterly relatable for anyone with siblings. This realistic graphic memoir tells the story of Raina; her sister, Amara; and her brother, Will, as they take a road trip with their mother from California to Colorado to join a family reunion. The author's narrative style is fresh and sharp, and the combination of well-paced and well-placed flashbacks pull the plot together, moving the story forward and helping readers understand the characters' point of view. The volume captures preadolescence in an effortless and uncanny way and turns tough subjects, such as parental marriage problems, into experiences with which readers can identify. This ability is what sets Telgemeier's work apart and makes her titles appealing to such a wide variety of readers. Not only does the story relay the road trip's hijinks, but it also touches on what happens with the advent of a new sibling and what it means to be truly sisters. Fans of the graphic novelist's work will be sure to delight in this return to the Telgemeier's family drama.—Krishna Grady, Darien Library, CT - Copyright 2014 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.