I haven’t read a graphic book of any kind since Maus by Art Spiegelman; in general, not my thing. However, a graphic memoir by a children’s book illustrator intrigued me. Stitches begins when David is six years old living in Detroit with his angry mother and his father, an osteopathic physician. David first explains to us the language of his family. His mother slammed cupboards, had a small scratchy cough and occasionally cried behind a door. His father had a punching bag in the basement. His brother Ted pounded on drums and David got sick. This is a memoir of David’s childhood, his painful adolescence when he had surgery for throat cancer, leaving home at sixteen and finally coming to terms (with the help of a therapist) with his parents, both the good and bad. As usual with a graphic book, it didn’t take me long to reach the last page, but then I immediately went back to page one to start again, paying even closer attention to the striking detail in Small’s pen and ink drawings. Remarkable. ~Patti