The Cartoonists Club
Four middle-school kids start an after-school cartoonists club. Makayla bursts with story ideas but cannot finish anything. Howard loves to draw, but his dad keeps telling him comics are a waste of time. Lynda fills sketchbooks every day and cannot stop fixating on the mistakes. Art is the new kid and just wants to make things with people. Across one school year the four learn to collaborate, finish a story, and figure out what kind of artist each of them wants to be. Raina Telgemeier and Scott McCloud co-wrote and co-drew the book as both a graphic novel and a how-to-make-comics primer.
What you might want to know about The Cartoonists Club
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Four middle schoolers start an after-school cartoonists club in the 2025 graphic novel from Smile author Raina Telgemeier and Understanding Comics author Scott McCloud.
The Cartoonists Club was co-written by Raina Telgemeier and Scott McCloud and published in 2025. Telgemeier is best known for Smile and the Babysitters Club graphic novel adaptations; McCloud is the author of Understanding Comics.
The Cartoonists Club is middle grade, recommended for readers 8 to 12. The premise of four kids forming a cartooning club at school is in Telgemeier's signature middle-school territory.
The Cartoonists Club is 288 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Cartoonists Club takes most readers 4 to 6 hours to finish.
The Cartoonists Club is a standalone novel by Raina Telgemeier, not part of a series.
The Cartoonists Club is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.