Stitches: A Memoir - Rilegato

New York Times #1 Bestseller

"An emotionally raw, artistically compelling and psychologically devastating graphic memoir of childhood trauma. . . . Graphic narrative at its most cathartic."
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"[A] profound and moving memoir. . . . Smalls tells his story with haunting subtlety and power."
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A triumph of both the spirit and of graphic storytelling."
— Los Angeles Times

"A powerful memoir of childhood and adolescence. . . . For those who appreciate unique stories of survival and second chances, Stitches is a beautiful memoir of a lost childhood, and a voice bitter sweetly found. It will leave you shaken and deeply satisfied."
— Globe and Mail

"David Small’s Stitches is fantastic. . . . Undoubtedly one of the best books of 2009."
— January magazine

"Extraordinary. . . . Small's seemingly simple black-and-white wash captures people, emotions, relationships, and plot subtleties with grace, precision, and a flawless sense of graphic narration. . . . Highly recommended."
— Library Journal (starred review)

"One word. Phenomenal. . . .This book changed my opinion of the [graphic novel] genre forever. . . . If you haven't read a graphic novel before, let this be your first. . . . Highly Recommended."
— Jeff Rivera, GalleyCat

"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. . . .If there's any fight left in the argument that comics aren't legitimate literature, this is just the thing to enlighten the naysayers."
— Booklist (starred review) 

"Small's art — by turns expressively abstract and clinically realistic — ensures that Stitches lands on the reader with satisfying emotional weight. The book contains several long, wordless passages in which Small's visual storytelling comes to the fore — facial expressions, body language and page layouts tell us more than long stretches of exposition ever could. . . . Palpably, recognizably human."
— Glen Weldon, NPR.org

"David Small's Stitches is aptly named. With surgical precision, the author pierces into the past and, with great artistry, seals the wound inflicted on a small child by cruel and unloving parents. Stitches is as intensely dramatic as a woodcut novel of the silent movie era and as fluid as a contemporary Japanese manga. It breaks new ground for graphic novels."
— Françoise Mouly, Art Editor, The New Yorker

"My first reading of Stitches left me speechless. And in awe. David Small presents us with a profound and moving gift of graphic literature that has the look of a movie and reads like a poem. Spare in words, painful in pictures, Small, in a style of dry menace, draws us a boy's life that you wouldn't want to live but you can't put down. From its first line, we know that we are in the hands of a master."
— Jules Feiffer, Pulitzer Prize-winning comics artist

"[A] wholly original work and one of the most intense graphic novels of this or any other year."
— ICcv2.com (4 stars)

"It is truly a beautiful and moving graphic memoir. . . . David's story deserves to be told, and Stitches is an astonishing rendition of his experience."
— Dallas Books Examiner

"Stitches is one of the most compelling books I've read in a long time. David Small, with his ground-breaking work, has elevated the art of the graphic novel and brought it to new creative heights."
— Stan Lee, co-creator of Spider-Man

"David Small evokes the mad scientific world of the 1950s beautifully, a time when everyone believed that science could fix everything. . . . Capturing body language and facial expressions subtly, Stitches becomes in Small's skillful hands a powerful story, an emotionally charged autobiography."
— Robert Crumb

“A moving story about the way man hands on misery to man, it also captures, seemingly effortlessly, the repression and double standards of the 1950s. . . . If this isn’t the definition of a satisfying literary experience, I don’t know what is. . . . Small’s illustrations are exquisite. But, like any novelist, he also has an eye for the telling moment. . . . A triumphant testament of survival.”
— The Observer

David Small is the recipient of the Caldecott Medal, a Christopher Medal, and the E. B. White Award for his work in picture books, which include Imogene’s Antlers, The Gardener, and So, You Want to Be President? He and his wife, the writer Sarah Stewart, live in Mendon, Michigan.