Summary Of David Small's Stitches

Stitches Stitches a memoir about the childhood of the author David Small is a graphic novel. David Small had a less than fairytale upbringing. He had the common family makeup: a stay at home mom, a radiologist for a dad and an older brother. But beyond that, Small’s childhood was everything but normal. His entire family didn’t communicate through words but instead they had their own specific ways of expressing their feelings. His mother had her nonverbals “Mama had her little cough, Once or twice, some quiet sobbing, out of sight... Or the slamming of kitchen cupboard doors. That was her language.” (Small 15). His father had a punching bag in the basement and extra hours at the hospital. Even his older brother had an unconventional way of

Small was also very sick as a child; his father tried many things to cure the chronically sick child. One of the things he tried was his specialty: X-rays. When David was young, using X-ray to solve medical issues was common. Unfortunately for Small, the X-rays hurt more than they helped. At the age of fourteen, he had surgery on his throat; the doctors took one vocal cord and his thyroid gland. His parents told him that it was a cyst, but in reality it was cancer, caused by his father’s X-rays. To add to the lack of verbal communication, David was now mute because of the missing vocal cord. Small started to go insane because he was not able to speak. “When you have no voice, you don’t exist.”(Small 212) Everyone in is his life ignored him including his old friends when he returned to school. His parents sent him away to an all boys school. The school put a strong emphasis on sports, bible studies and manual labor. Small ran away many times. Finally at the age of fifteen there was a light at the end of the tunnel for David; his parents sent him to a psychologist. The psychologist, who is drawn as a rabbit, won the trust of Small. “You’ve been living in a world full of nonsense, David. No one had been telling you the truth

David Small is now a very successful child picture book writer who also illustrates his own works. Reading one of his books, one would not guess the horrors that was his childhood. He writes and illustrates with elegance and expression, something that was forbidden for his first fifteen years. Through the help of the psychologist, David Small was not only able to turn his life around, he was able to even have a positive outcome to a very negative