Guts Book Discussion

 

Book Discussion

In my group, we talked about Raina Telgemeier's most recent graphic memoir, Guts. I prepared by reading the book, refreshing myself on some of Raina's biographical information from her website, and seeing what she is up to right now. At the moment, her art is on exhibit at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. The exhibit, "Facing Feelings," is all about the emotions Raina is able to convey in her art. Raina's use of emanata came up in discussion, a term made up by cartoonist Mort Walker in his Lexicon of Comicana originally to describe the squiggly lines above a character's head, but now more generically applies to all sorts of squiggles, marks and symbols in comics. We all agreed that Raina was able to convey a lot of emotion, and did focus on the facial expressions used, some like subtle shifts of the eyes, and others an aura of dread with eyes changing color and teeth clenched (big emotions here).

My only expectations going in was that we'd all read the book and came with some thoughts/comments to share.

I love discussing books, I get to hear about what other's valued in a work and share differing perspectives. I run two graphic novel clubs at the moment, one for kids grades 5-7, and one for teens grades 8-12, and it is usually very  different from how our discussion on Guts went. Oftentimes, we talk about the book for 20 minutes if we're lucky, then kids are eager to talk about something else, or do a separate activity. It was certainly a highlight to have the kind of discussion around Guts that we had, and I will continue to try to bring that energy into my book clubs. I do especially appreciate giving people the tools to talk about graphic novels, so I'm adding emanata to my vocabulary in the book club.

I think the only lowlight was the dreaded scheduling of the discussion. It's just hard to find a time that works for everyone, and I know I was rushing home to get on Zoom and another person or 2 were on a dinner break.