"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 of The New Yorker
"A profound and moving gift of graphic literature that has the look of a movie and reads like a poem." — Jules Feiffer
"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
"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 and other Marvel Comics
Starred Review. "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, which keeps it palatable as it reinforces its appalling aspects. 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
"With its mixture of stark realism and devilish fantasy, Stitches achieves a vibrant emotionalism that’s rare in both memoirs and graphic work of this kind. It’s never sentimental, but it may well move you to tears." — Ken Tucker, Entertainment Weekly
"One word. Phenomenal....If you haven’t read a graphic novel before, let this be your first. I cannot say enough about this book, which will be released in September and is something to look out for. Highly Recommended. I reluctantly give this novel 5 stars; reluctantly, only because there aren’t 6 stars to give out." — Jeff Rivera, GalleyCat
Starred Review. "Emotionally raw, artistically compelling and psychologically devastating graphic memoir of childhood trauma... Graphic narrative at its most cathartic." — Kirkus Reviews
Starred Review. "It's Small's art that lifts his memoir into the extraordinary. His seemingly simple black-and-white wash captures people, emotions, relationships, and plot subtleties with grace, precision, and a flawless sense of graphic narration....compelling, disturbing, yet surprisingly easy to read and more than meets the high standard set by the widely praised Fun Home." — Library Journal
Small "employs angled shots and silent montages worthy of Alfred Hitchcock." — Washington Post
"A breathtaking, horrific, and ultimately redemptive work." — Miami Herald
"David Small’s Stitches is a master class in how to use silence, both internal and external, to convey emotion and meaning." — Jo Ann Beard, New York Times Book Review
"[B]rilliant and heartbreaking.... Small's drawing is masterful and evocative, from the wet-on-wet blurs of Detroit's hellish, smoky skyline, which launches the cinematic opening montage, to the carefully drawn tubes in his mother's nose as she lies dying in the hospital toward the end of the book.... Just think of Daniel Clowes's Ghost World or Megan Kelso's Squirrel Mother or Art Spiegelman's Maus. Now, to the list of powerful works of art in this versatile medium, we can add the horrific but ultimately redemptive Stitches." — Michael Sims, Washington Post Book World
