He later finds out that his cyst was cancer. For the next 10 years he can no longer speak in anything above a whisper. He’s told it’s a routine operation but when he wakes up, he has stitches from ear to chest, and only one vocal cord. In this environment, the young David Small retreats into his art and into his imagination.Īt age 14, David goes into hospital to have a cyst removed from his neck. His father pummels a punching bag in the basement. His mother expresses herself through the slamming of cabinet doors. Stitches is the harrowing account of Small’s childhood growing up in a 1950s Midwestern home where no one speaks. But on that chilly spring afternoon, standing in front of 190 eager undergraduates, he came to talk about a different sort of children’s book, a book about childhood intended for adults, a graphic memoir published last fall called Stitches. So it was no surprise that he should be the featured speaker on the last day of Harvard’s popular class, “History, Philosophy and Literature of Childhood,” taught by Maria Tatar. David Small has made a career illustrating books for children.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |