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Stitches is an adult graphic novel that leaves you mesmerized. With its spare black and white drawings it pulls the reader into the grim world of David Small as a child & teenager. David is part of a 1950s disfunctional family. His father, a physician, uses radiation therapy on him to treat a growth on his neck, & possibly gives him cancer. His mother shows no love or affection for her son. Both his mother and his grandmother are portrayed as strange and creepy figures (the grandmother ends up in a mental institution after trying to burn down her house with her husband locked in it). David suffers from strange & terrifying dreams & his only outlet is in the drawings he returns to throughout the novel. Never having received a word of support, he is surprised when a therapist praises them and tells him how clever he is. The drawings in this graphic novel are so simple yet so expressive. They convey an atmosphere of menace, of David's confusion and fear. They are very intense. Despite the grim nature of this narrative, it ends on a positive note, showing that it is possible to triumph over a traumatic childhood. If you have never read a graphic novel try this one. It is worth looking at.

David Small has received awards for his work in children's picture books, including the Caldecott Medal, the Christopher medal & the E. B. White Award. He is married to a writer & lives in Michigan. http://stitches.davidsmallbooks.com/

Starred Review. Like other 'important' graphic works it seems destined to sit beside—think no less than Maus—this is a frequently disturbing, pitch-black funny, ultimately cathartic story whose full impact can only be delivered in the comics medium, which keeps it palatable as it reinforces its appalling aspects. If there’s any fight left in the argument that comics aren’t legitimate literature, this is just the thing to enlighten the naysayers. (Booklist)

Starred Review. Emotionally raw, artistically compelling and psychologically devastating graphic memoir of childhood trauma....Graphic narrative at its most cathartic. (Kirkus Reviews )

Labels: childhood trauma, David Small, graphic novels, Stitches