2009 National Book Award Finalist,
Young People's Literature
David
Small Stitches W. W. Norton & Company
Video from the 2009 National
Book Awards Finalist Reading
Photo credit: Gordon
Trice
CITATION
At fourteen, David Small was
reduced to one vocal cord after surgery for cancer that
he wasn’t even told he had. Vivid and assured
cartoon illustrations accompanied by evocative, pared-down
text bring the reader fully inside a family tortured
by anger, repression, lies, and mental illness, and
then take the reader along with Small into healing and
understanding. Stitches is not simply the story
of how and why Small lost his voice; it’s also
proof that he’s reclaimed it, and himself.
ABOUT THE BOOK
One day David Small awoke from
a supposedly harmless operation to discover that he
had been transformed into a virtual mute. The fourteen-year-old
boy had not been told that he had throat cancer and
was expected to die. In Stitches, Small re-creates
his real-life journey from a speechless victim to a
young man willing to flee his home with nothing more
than dreams of becoming an artist.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Small is the author and
illustrator of numerous books for children. His books
have won many awards, including the 2008 E.B. White
Award for When Dinosaurs Came with Everything by
Elise Broach; the 2001 Caldecott Medal for So, You
Want to Be President? by Judith St. George; and
the 1997 Caldecott Honor and the Christopher Medal for
The Gardner, written by his wife, Sarah Stewart.
Small lives in Mendon, Michigan.
