S.F. author Telgemeier relates to her growing young audience

Raina Telgemeier cringes visibly when she talks about her first attempts to write a comic strip.

The San Francisco resident, who fell in love with the art form reading Calvin and Hobbes, Foxtrot and others on the Chronicle comics pages, describes her own preteen work as “bad For Better or for Worse knock-offs.”

“They weren’t funny. That was my big frustration as a kid,” Telgemeier says. “I kept trying to write comics, and I wanted punch lines and I wanted humor. I wanted to make my friends laugh when they read them, and no one ever did. I felt like a failure.”

Holding on to that memory is arguably a foundation of Telgemeier’s literary success. The young-adult author has built an enormous, devoted fan base that now arrives to her readings by the hundreds, and finds her graphic novels — including “Smile” and “Sisters” — eminently relatable. As much as they work as entertainment, Telgemeier’s books have a Judy Blume-like way of speaking to the audience as a guide and confidante.

Her latest, “Ghosts,” may be the best example yet. The fictional graphic novel features two sisters, Cat and Maya, who move to a Northern California coastal town (Half Moon Bay was an inspiration) to ease Maya’s suffering from cystic fibrosis. Day of the Dead themes abound, as Cat struggles to fit in while coming to terms with her sister’s mortality.

Telgemeier talked about the themes during a recent interview at Comix Experience in San Francisco, where she will appear for a signing on Saturday, Oct. 29.

“Kids deal with some very heavy stuff,” she says, “and I learned when I was writing (autobiographical stories), the sadder and more introspective I got, the more people could find something to relate to. And the more specific I got, the more universal it seemed.”

Telgemeier, 39, fell in love with comics when she was 9, and they’ve been a steady part of her life ever since. Even as a young student at Lakeshore Elementary School in San Francisco, she was turning in book reports with drawings and panels.

Her father, Denis, a writer and editor, stoked her interest, bringing Telgemeier to comic book stores and introducing her to alternative artists, including Robert Crumb. A turning point came when she obtained a copy of “Barefoot Gen,” a Japanese manga that covers the Hiroshima bombing from the perspective of a young boy and his family.

“As a kid, thinking, ‘Comics are fun, and they’re entertaining, and I like them because they are funny,’ this just kind of blew my whole world apart,” Telgemeier says. “I sort of became this little activist and pacifist when I was 10 or 11 years old. I was trying to figure out how to end war. I figured it was through comics and that had to be the solution. My mission became to get everybody to read this book.”

After finding a like-minded community in the local alternative press and comics scene, Telgemeier was recruited by Scholastic, which hired her to help revive the “Babysitters Club” books in 2006 for its Graphix graphic novel imprint.

Her success has since been building exponentially.

Telgemeier’s autobiographical Web comic “Smile,” about the time she suffered a fall as a sixth grader and seriously injured her two front teeth, was released as a graphic novel in 2010. It was followed by the high school theater book “Drama” (2012), “Sisters” (2014) and “Ghosts” last month.

Ashley Despain, a children’s section specialist at Green Apple Books in San Francisco who has become friends with the author, says Telgemeier’s rise has been striking to watch, but not surprising.

“She doesn’t patronize her readers,” Despain says. “She writes in a way that people can relate to her story. She doesn’t say, ‘This is what I think kids will like.’ She says, ‘This is what happened to me.’”

In an interview with no kids around, Telgemeier is friendly but reserved. She seems more comfortable at a public reading filled with children, even with more than 350 people in the room. During a reading at Hall Middle School in Corte Madera last month, she talks about her own struggles, offers a slide show with her earliest unpolished work and invites a few starstruck readers onstage for a drawing game. Words of encouragement are offered throughout.

“I had just started middle school,” Telgemeier tells the crowd as she talks about “Smile.” “This is not the time in your life you want people looking at you and saying, ‘What’s wrong with your face?’”

Telgemeier signs at a clip of about 25 seconds per reader, sending most children home before bedtime. Madie Yates, Emi Erving and Elisa Cobb, all 9 years old, don’t even make it to the end of the stage before they sit and start reading their autographed copies of “Ghosts.”

“I’ve read all her books, and can’t believe I got to meet her,” Elisa says. “I think she’s really talented.”

Telgemeier describes her writing process as a very introverted exercise, often starting at noon and lasting until 1 a.m. or 2 a.m., with small breaks to enjoy San Francisco. She has a lot of friends (Despain is in a writing club with Telgemeier), but doesn’t offer to share much from her current personal life. The author doesn’t deny, however, that she’s generally more comfortable around children than adults.

“I think I still have a pretty young voice and a pretty young spirit,” Telgemeier says. “I’m the one who sits at the kids’ table at Thanksgiving dinner. And at parties, I’m usually the one who’s in the corner drawing with the kids, as opposed to drinking with the adults.”

Telgemeier expects to continue her book-release-every-two-years pattern, writing again after her book tour ends next month.

“It’s quite likely I’ll keep on writing for this age group because it feels like it is my voice. I am really comfortable here, and my readers are amazing. They’re just incredible people,” Telgemeier says. “That hasn’t changed about me. I don’t think it ever will.”

Raina Telgemeier: 11 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 29. Comix Experience, 305 Divisadero St., S.F. www.comixexperience.com. 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 30. Willow Glen Middle School, 22105 Cottle Ave., San Jose. www.hicklebees.com. 6 p.m. Nov. 1. Santa Cruz Veterans Memorial Building, 846 Front St., Santa Cruz. www.veteranshall.org