Product Description

One day David Small awoke from a supposedly harmless operation to discover that he had been transformed into a virtual mute. A vocal cord removed, his throat slashed and stitched together like a bloody boot, the fourteen-year-old boy had not been told that he had cancer and was expected to die.In Stitches, Small, the award-winning children's illustrator and author, re-creates this terrifying event in a life story that might have been imagined by Kafka. As the images painfully tumble out, one by one, we gain a ringside seat at a gothic family drama where David--a highly anxious yet supremely talented child--all too often became the unwitting object of his parents' buried frustration and rage.Believing that they were trying to do their best, David's parents did just the reverse. Edward Small, a Detroit physician, who vented his own anger by hitting a punching bag, was convinced that he could cure his young son's respiratory problems with heavy doses of radiation, possibly causing David's cancer. Elizabeth, David's mother, tyrannically stingy and excessively scolding, ran the Small household under a cone of silence where emotions, especially her own, were hidden.Depicting this coming-of-age story with dazzling, kaleidoscopic images that turn nightmare into fairy tale, Small tells us of his journey from sickly child to cancer patient, to the troubled teen whose risky decision to run away from home at sixteen--with nothing more than the dream of becoming an artist--will resonate as the ultimate survival statement.A silent movie masquerading as a book, Stitches renders a broken world suddenly seamless and beautiful again. Finalist for the 2009 National Book Award (Young Adult); finalist for two 2010 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards (Best Writer/Artist: Nonfiction; Best Reality-Based Work).

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #300821 in Books
• Published on: 2009-11-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Review
David Small s Stitches is aptly named. With surgical precision, the author pierces into the past and, with great artistry, seals thewound inflicted on a small child by cruel and unloving parents. Stitchesis as intensely dramatic as a woodcut novel of the silent movie era andas fluid as a contemporary Japanese manga. It breaks new ground forgraphic novels. --Francoise Mouly, Art Editor of The New Yorker

About the Author
National Book Award winner for Octavian Nothing, David Small is the recipient of the Caldecott Medal, a Christopher Medal and the E.B. White Award for his picture books, which include Imogene's Antlers, The Gardener and So, You Want to Be President?