Noe’s Comics Nook: Guts

Review

You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone interested in comics today who doesn’t know Raina Telgemeier. With multiple New York Times bestselling comics and a massive portion of total comics sales each year all to herself, it comes as no shock that her latest story, Guts, arrived with a 1 million copy first printing.

Guts continues Telgemeier’s autobiographic, health-related storytelling (such as with Smile) and delivers a fun, quick, and educational read. The humorous, gross-out illustrations start from the beginning as we see both Raina and her Mom sick with the stomach flu, courtesy of a younger brother of course. While this bout of illness is a source of great fun the next day, it soon becomes a source of anxiety for Raina, which continues as we enter fifth grade, changing friendships, and the inevitable changes that growing up brings (puberty, oh no!).

Exploring her anxiety and relationship to food, we see Raina experience new foods with her best friend Jane, learn that even those who are roughest might be going through something serious, and that there is no shame in going to therapy because “it’s no big deal.” I find myself returning repeatedly to the questions asked on page 69 – “Can you be sick even if you’re not sick? / Can you be health even if you hurt?” – because they speak so clearly to the everyday experience of chronic illness. Guts offers a positive, empowering example that we all need.

Elements of Story

Plot: What begins as a simple bout of stomach flu spirals into a complex web of anxiety for Raina over using the bathroom, food, and adolescent life in general. As it becomes clear that Raina’s anxiety won’t be gone quickly, how will she learn to cope with it – and survive the trials of fifth grade at the same time?

Characters: Raina, Raina’s Mom, Raina’s Dad, Nicole, Teddy, Michelle, Will, Amara, Jane, Mr. Abrams, Lauren, Raina’s Grandma, Various Minor Characters (named/unnamed)

Major Settings: Raina’s family apartment, school (including classrooms, recess area, bathroom, etc.), medical offices, Lauren’s office, Jane’s house

Themes: Anxiety, friendship, family, coming of age, therapy, acceptance, stress

Lesson Plan Idea Using Common Core Standards (CCS)

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.7 – Analyze how visual and multimedia elements contribute to the meaning, tone, or beauty of a text (e.g., graphic novel, multimedia presentation of fiction, folktale, myth, poem).

Directions: On page 69 of Guts, Raina, as the narrator, poses the following questions in the bottom two panels: “Can you be sick even if you’re not sick” and “Can you be healthy even if you hurt?” These questions are central to the themes of the book, as Raina discovers what it means to have anxiety and how to accept and cope with it. Throughout the book, we are shown different visual representations of how this anxiety, stress, nausea feels to the characters.

Discuss these two questions briefly with the full class and evaluate an example of one of the visual representations (I recommend the bottom panel on page 20) together. After this, ask the students to work in groups of 3 or 4 to do the following:

1. Choose 3 or 4 (one per student) of the visual representations of anxiety or sickness from the text and describe the image. Consider having students redraw the image in their own style.
2. Choose another illness and draw 3 to 4 new images that visually represent how that illness feels. Be prepared to share these with the rest of the class and be able to describe why you chose these images.
3. Compare and contrast how different illnesses are visually represented. Does the visual representation change your reaction to the illness?