Sisters

Sisters is a middle-grade graphic novel written and illustrated by Raina Telgemeier and colored by Braden Lamb. Raina Telgemeier wrote the graphic novel about a real experience she had on a road trip with her sister, Amara. The graphic novel is thus autobiographical of this time in her life and of her complicated relationship with her younger siblings and parents. Sisters looks at issues of facing fears, connecting with others, and finding one’s place in a family through the process of growing up. It is also a companion to its predecessor, Smile. Raina Telgemeier has written several middle-grade graphic novels that have earned widespread popularity as well as numerous awards. Sisters was the winner of the Will Eisner Award and was on the New York Times Bestseller List for 117 weeks.

This guide utilizes the 2014 Scholastic, Inc. version of the graphic novel.

Plot Summary

Sisters opens as Raina and her family discuss their upcoming plans to take a road trip from their home in San Francisco to Colorado Springs for a family reunion. Raina is the oldest child of three, and her younger siblings, Amara and Will, seem to take up all the attention. Dad plans to take a plane to the reunion and meet the family there so he can finish some work, and Raina dreads getting in her mother’s van because of a pet snake that the family believes died underneath the front seat. Amara teases Raina for being afraid, and Raina wonders why she ever wanted a sister. In a flashback, Raina is a young child asking her parents for a sister over and over. One day, her parents bring home Amara, and Raina is disappointed to find that Amara is too young to play with her. As Amara gets older, she’s more interested in playing by herself and wants little to do with Raina. Both girls love drawing, but Amara prefers to draw on her own, which hurts Raina’s feelings.

When the family leaves the next day, Amara and youngest brother, Will, argue over who gets to sit in the front seat while Raina happily sets up her own unit in the middle. Before long, Amara is bored and begins bothering Raina, but this is broken up when the girls spot a herd of deer along the road. Amara’s love of forest animals goes back to when she was very small and discovered a vinyl record of a story about deer. It inspired her to draw a picture of all the forest animals, which made Raina jealous. In the present, Amara asks Raina to borrow her colored pencils, and Raina lies and says she didn’t bring any. When an intense storm starts blowing their van on the highway, Mom makes the decision to stop at a cabin for the night. In the morning, several dead animals lie about the campsite as a result of the storm, and it reminds Raina of her and Amara’s experiences with pets. They both get fish at first, which die, and when they get a chameleon instead, it dies as well.

The family arrives at a dinosaur monument and decides to stop for Will. A flashback shows baby Will coming home from the hospital and both Raina and Amara adjusting to having to share their bedroom. When Will cries at night, neither of them can sleep. The next morning, Amara screams and refuses to go to preschool. When Dad suggests taking the girls to the zoo to give them a break from all of the stress at home, Amara is thrilled when she sees the snakes. Raina thinks back to a time when she accidentally stepped on a dead snake while camping, and how she has feared them ever since; hearing about this, Amara is certain she needs to have one. In the present, the family makes it to Colorado and camps out under the stars. Another flashback shows Amara wailing when she wants McDonald’s and is refused. Dad wants to give in, but Mom wants to teach Amara a lesson. A few days later, Dad is laid off, and Raina wishes that everything she has been going through was just a dream.

At Christmas, Dad is still out of work, but her parents manage to get Raina a Walkman player. The Walkman becomes both a joy and a way for Raina to escape the tensions of her family. She spends most of the road trip with her headphones on, tuning everyone around her out. When Will hears mention of Dad, he becomes ecstatic and starts singing, which irritates Mom enough to yell at him about how much he is like his father. A flashback shows Will as a baby as he and Dad watch a baseball game with wide grins on their faces. In the kitchen, Mom worries about when Dad will find a job. When he does find work, he brings home a brand-new Macintosh computer, and Amara spends hours using the paint program and demanding privacy.

The family finally makes it to Colorado Springs and pulls up to a massive, newly built house that belongs to Mom’s sister. She greets her sister happily, and Will finds his cousins. Raina asks about her cousin Lindsay, but Lindsay is out at the mall, leaving Raina to hang out with other cousins she can’t relate to. When Lindsay does come home, she is completely uninterested in Raina, and only invites her to a karaoke party later so she can have an audience. The next morning, Raina wakes up holding her stuffed bear, and Lindsay and her other cousins make fun of her. Raina goes to put on some of Lindsay’s makeup to seem more adult, but it’s clear she isn’t sure how to use it. Raina goes outside and finds Amara sitting alone and asks her if she ever feels different from everyone else. Amara admits she does, but refuses to share an understanding moment with Raina, instead accusing her of self-pity. Raina stomps off, and when she falls asleep that night, she thinks about how difficult it is to connect with people.

In a flashback, Dad announces the plan to give Raina her own room and the space to grow up. To make it up to Amara, he and Mom decide to let her get a pet snake, which infuriates Raina. Over the first week of having Mango the snake, Raina stays away from it as much as possible and cringes whenever she hears about it. After a couple of weeks, Amara realizes the snake still hasn’t eaten, and Mom finds out it needs to eat live mice. Reluctant to have a snake that eats live mice, Mom decides to take it back to the pet store, but it gets loose in the van. Mango curls up under the front seat and refuses to come out, and Mom doesn’t know what else to do besides leave it there.

As the family gets ready to head home to California, Raina says her goodbyes and Amara gifts all of her cousins a drawing. They take Dad to the airport, and Will continuously asks why he can’t ride home. Mom and Dad have an awkward goodbye, and Raina asks about it in the van later. Mom admits that she and Dad needed a break over the past week, and while they are struggling, she thinks everything will be okay. Ironically, the van then breaks down, and Mom takes Will and hitchhikes to town for help. When Amara and Raina are left alone, Raina becomes overwhelmed by the heat and starts panicking about her parents’ relationship. Her Walkman dies, and Amara tells her that she would have noticed their parents’ issues a long time ago if she had only been paying attention. Suddenly, Mango emerges from under the seat, startling the girls. Amara scoops it up in a paper bag and Raina agrees to let her keep it in exchange for some batteries. In the end, Raina decides to leave her headphones out and spend the rest of the road trip connecting with her family.