Stitches by David Small

This is my second grown-up graphic novel, and, I have to say, while it was quick, it was extremely moving and even painful to read. I cannot really do this book any justice. David Small can certainly convey in a tiny line drawing much more than my 1000 words ever could. In a wonderful interview he gave to Powell’s Books, he relates the idea that he is not a writer, so he couldn’t imagine sitting down and writing his autobiography. But, when he began to draw, the words flowed naturally. In this case, they seem effortless.

If you are thinking this is going to be a fun little comic book adventure, let me give you a brief outline. David Small grew up in a house filled with noise where nobody ever really talked. His mom communicated with coughs or slamming doors, his dad came home from work to thump his punching bag, and his older brother spent his energy locked away playing the drums. Despite the fact that he is looking back at this from the vantage point of his sixty-plus years, Small has captured the sounds and fears of a six year old in a dramatic way. After a childhood spent being sick with his radiologist dad using radiation “therapy” on him, David finds himself, at age 11, with a “growth” on his neck. A concerned friend of his parents (married to a doctor) discovers it, and makes them promise to have it checked. They take him — three and a half years later. When they discover it is cancer, David is never told. Instead, he wakes up in the hospital after multiple surgeries with a huge scar running down his neck and only one vocal cord. He has been officially silenced.

If the drawing of him at his first therapy appointment doesn’t rip your heart out, I’m sorry, you don’t have one. Unbridled emotion is packed into even the simplest of drawings in this book. Reading it, I had the very same feeling as I did reading Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle, when I had to keep checking the back flap to make sure she lived through her horrendous childhood. The idea that David Small was able to walk away from that life and make something of himself (illustrator of more than forty children’s books, including a Caldecott winner, husband, etc.) is simply astonishing. To learn more about the story behind the story, read the excellent interview on the Powell’s site: http://www.powells.com/blog/?p=7543