Genre 6 - Fiction, Fantasy, and Young Adult Literature
"Read one of the following graphic works:"
Plot Summary
Stitches chronicles the author's life from birth to adulthood, revealing along the way myriad secrets that shaped his family environment. Everyone within the family has their own way of coping with the taciturn family ways. As a sickly child, David received various experimental treatments on a regular basis from his father the doctor. He also encountered various frightening medical specimens and photos as a result of spending time around hospitals and medical books. David tries to escape from these horrors by indulging himself in the fantasy of Alice in Wonderland. When he develops a lump on his throat, his mother, scared of the costs of the operation, puts off treatment of it and instead indulges in a shopping spree. When it is finally operated on, David finds he has lost his voice after the operation. His family has told him nothing about his surgery, but he discovers a letter from his mother to his grandmother that says it was cancer. He begins a downward spiral of skipping school, running away, and eventually ends up living alone at 16 as he finishes high school and indulges himself entirely in art. David finally finds support in a friendly therapist, portrayed as a white rabbit, who helps him to make sense of the many secrets his family has hidden over the years. Reconciliation isCritical Analysis
The lack of colors in the black and white drawings shaded only with gray washes works to convey visually the harsh emotional environment of family experiences in a void of communication. Various flashback, dream, and nightmare sequences are integrated visually into the narrative of the book, skillfully lending greater insight into the character's unspoken motivations throughout. Metaphors are also conveyed both visually and within the text to more fully depict the emotions behind them.As a solo work of art and writing, the book works exceptionally well as a whole. The graphic-memoir format is also particularly well suited to an author who has won the Caldecott medal for his artwork in children's picture books. While it is certainly not a cheerful childhood tale, it is so skillfully executed as to provide great insight into the workings of non-communicative families in general, and David Small's in particular.
Connections
- Find out more about living with cancer.
Grace: A Child's Intimate Journey Through Cancer and Recovery (Coping With Illness)
by Melinda Marchiano
The Last Lectureby Randy Pausch
- Read more graphic memoirs.
The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale (No 1)
by Art Spiegelman
The Complete Persepolisby Marjane Satrapi
- Read more about growing up with dysfunctional families.
Because I am Furniture
by Thalia Chaltas
A Child Called "It": One Child's Courage to Surviveby Dave Pelzer
- Explore the history of radiology and medicine.
Naked To The Bone: Medical Imaging In The Twentieth Century
by Bettyann H. Kevles
Under the Radar: Cancer and the Cold War (Critical Issues in Health and Medicine)by Ellen Leopold
Awards/Reviews
National Book Award Finalist 2009ALA Notable Book 2010
From Publishers Weekly:
In this profound and moving memoir, Small, an award-winning children's book illustrator, uses his drawings to depict the consciousness of a young boy. . . Small's black and white pen and ink drawings are endlessly perceptive as they portray the layering of dream and imagination onto the real-life experiences of the young boy. Small's intuitive morphing of images, as with the terrible postsurgery scar on the main character's throat that becomes a dark staircase climbed by his mother, provide deep emotional echoes. Some understanding is gained as family secrets are unearthed, but for the most part David fends for himself in a family that is uncommunicative to a truly ghastly degree. Small tells his story with haunting subtlety and power.From Library Journal:
"Stitches" refers to the clumsy sutures on 14-year-old David's neck after a cancer operation he wasn't supposed to know was cancer-an operation that renders him mute for a long time. More subtly, "stitches" could allude to how David's family members clumsily hold together their outwardly normal but unhappy lives: dad a stiff radiologist taking refuge in the liberal application of "healing" X-rays, mother a furious, cruel force, the cranky and feisty grandmother. Amidst enforced family silence about the parents' marriage and this unexpected handicap, a psychiatrist tells David a simple truth, freeing him to find his voice in art and, later, win awards for children's picture books. In fact, it's Small's art that lifts his memoir into the extraordinary. His seemingly simple black-and-white wash captures people, emotions, relationships, and plot subtleties with grace, precision, and a flawless sense of graphic narration. Verdict In no way the latest ho-hum episode of Dysfunctional Family Funnies, Stitches is compelling, disturbing, yet surprisingly easy to read and more than meets the high standard set by the widely praised Fun Home. With some sexual issues; highly recommended for older teens up.From School Library Journal:
Small is best known for his picture-book illustration. Here he tells the decidedly grim but far from unique story of his own childhood. Many teens will identify with the rigors of growing up in a household of angry silences, selfish parents, feelings of personal weakness, and secret lives. Small shows himself to be an excellent storyteller here, developing the cast of characters as they appeared to him during this period of his life, while ending with the reminder that his parents and brother probably had very different takes on these same events. The title derives from throat surgery Small underwent at 14, which left him, for several years, literally voiceless. Both the visual and rhetorical metaphors throughout will have high appeal to teen sensibilities. The shaded artwork, composed mostly of ink washes, is both evocative and beautifully detailed. A fine example of the growing genre of graphic-novel memoirs.-Francisca Goldsmith, Halifax Public Libraries, Nova ScotiaFrom Booklist:
Prolific, Caldecott Medal-winning Small makes the leap to the graphic novel with a spare and unflinching memoir. . . The suffocating silences of the household swell in grays and blacks with more nuance than lesser artists achieve with full rainbows of color, and Small's stark lines and intricacies of facial expression obliterate the divide between simplicity and sophistication. 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.--Chipman, Ian
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