This book could be potentially triggering to readers with similar experiences. 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.ĭepicting 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.Ĭontent Warning: Stitches: A Memoir focuses a lot on the emotional and psychological abuse that David Small experienced from his parents and grandparents (specifically his maternal grandmother).
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. 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.īelieving that they were trying to do their best, David’s parents did just the reverse. 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. 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. One day David Small awoke from a supposedly harmless operation to discover that he had been transformed into a virtual mute. White Award for his picture books, which include Imogene’s Antlers, The Gardener, and So, You Want to Be President? He lives in Mendon, Michigan. Underneath the title is a sequence from the book where David attempts to change a pillow-case by punching and kicking the pillow.įormat and Price: Hardback from my local libraryĭavid Small is the recipient of the Caldecott Medal, a Christopher Medal, and the E. The top half of the cover is a group of adult characters, all of them looking towards the reader, all of them wearing glasses, and giving the reader a disapproving look. Image Description: book-cover of Stitches: A Memoir by David Small (hardback format).
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