Sisters Reading Level: A Complete Guide

What Reading Level Is Sisters?

Lexile 290L, ATOS 2.4, interest level grades 5–12 — the lowest formula scores of any Telgemeier book in this catalog, reflecting a word count of just 5,068. As with all Telgemeier graphic novels, these scores capture only the prose text in dialogue and captions, not the visual narrative across 208 pages. The non-linear structure — present-day scenes alternating with flashbacks across years of the sisters’ childhood — adds narrative complexity that is entirely invisible to the formula scores but very much present for the reader. Our assessment: grades 3–6, ages 8–13. For official scores, visit Lexile.com or AR BookFinder.

What Age Is Sisters Appropriate For?

Ages 8–13, grades 3–6. The primary content note is the family situation: the parents’ marriage is under strain throughout the book, and the possibility of divorce hangs over the road trip as something Raina is aware of but can’t fully name. By the book’s end, the divorce is more clearly implied. This is handled from a child’s perspective — Raina observes, worries, and doesn’t entirely understand — and with enough restraint that it is not distressing, but parents who want to prepare children for this content before sharing the book can do so. No other content concerns.

What Is Sisters About?

The summer before seventh grade, Raina’s family packs into a minivan for a week-long road trip from San Francisco to a family reunion in Colorado. Raina sits in the middle seat with her little brother Will beside her and her younger sister Amara behind — Amara, who has always been grouchy and independent and not quite the sister Raina imagined when she desperately wanted one. Their father will meet them in Colorado; for the drive, it is just Raina, Amara, Will, and their mother, who seems to be carrying something she’s not quite saying.

Woven through the road trip in flashbacks: Raina wanting a sister so badly it hurt. Amara arriving — cute, immediately irritating, completely her own person from the beginning. The years of the sisters not quite getting along, not quite connecting, not quite understanding each other. Raina hiding her colored pencils from Amara before the trip, out of spite, and then feeling bad about it. The small accumulation of sibling history that neither of them fully understands.

By the time the family reaches Colorado, something has shifted — not fixed, not fully resolved, but shifted. Raina and Amara know each other a little better. The thing between their parents is named, if quietly. The road trip ends with less of what was unspoken at the start.

The Non-Linear Structure — The Book’s Most Distinctive Feature

Sisters uses a non-linear structure more deliberately than any of Telgemeier’s other books: the present-day road trip and the flashbacks to the sisters’ childhood are woven together throughout, with the flashbacks triggered by things that happen or are remembered during the drive. This structure allows Telgemeier to show both the present state of the relationship and its full history simultaneously — the reader understands why the sisters are where they are because they’ve seen how they got there, even as the present-day story unfolds.

Kirkus called it “laugh-out-loud funny and quietly serious all at once” — which captures the structural achievement accurately. The comedy of the road trip (Amara’s independence, Will’s obliviousness, the indignities of a week in a minivan) and the seriousness of what Raina is observing about her parents coexist in the same panels without either undermining the other. This is genuinely difficult to do and is worth noting with older students as a specific craft achievement.

Sisters Themes and Lessons

The book’s warmest argument is about the gap between the sibling you imagined and the sibling you got — and how the one you got can turn out to be exactly right in ways you couldn’t have imagined. Raina wanted a sister who would be her best friend, share her interests, play what she wanted to play. She got Amara, who is none of those things. What she actually got, the book argues through its structure and its ending, is something more interesting: a specific person with her own specific personality who will eventually become someone Raina genuinely knows. The relationship isn’t fixed at the end of the book; it is begun.

The collaboration with Amara in the book’s creation — Telgemeier submitted the storyboard to her sister three years before publication, seeking permission and incorporating Amara’s insights into a second draft — is itself part of the book’s argument. The sister who seemed least interested in sharing Raina’s creative life turned out to be a genuine collaborator when asked. This is worth sharing with readers who ask about the book’s origins.

Talking with your child: Was there ever a time you got something you really wanted and it wasn’t what you expected? What do you think Raina’s mom was thinking during the road trip? How are Raina and Amara different from each other — and what does each one need from the other? What does the title mean — is it about what it means to be sisters, or just about the two of them specifically?

Books Similar to Sisters

About Raina Telgemeier

See our Smile guide for a full biography. Sisters was published in 2014, four years after Smile, and is the book Telgemeier has described as requiring the most courage — not because of what it depicts, but because she had to ask her sister’s permission to tell it. She submitted the full storyboard to Amara three years before publication; Amara contributed insights and helped develop the final draft. The collaboration is one of the most meaningful parts of the book’s creation and is part of what gives it its specific warmth: this is not a story told about someone but a story told with them.