Summary: David Small, a best-selling and highly regarded children's book illustrator, comes forward with this unflinching graphic memoir. Remarkable and intensely dramatic, Stitches tells the story of a fourteen-year-old boy who awakes one day from a supposedly harmless operation to discover that he has been transformed into a virtual mute—a vocal cord removed, his throat slashed and stitched together like a bloody boot. From horror to hope, Small proceeds to graphically portray an almost unbelievable descent into adolescent hell and the difficult road to physical, emotional, and artistic recovery.
Review: David Small is an award winning children's author/illustrator, but I have never read any of his books. In some ways, not knowing the author's previous work makes this graphic novel even more enjoyable. I will start by saying that both the story and the art are excellent! The story revolves around David Small from the age of 6 to adulthood. He comes from an interesting but dysfunctional family -- his mother and her side of the family are explored in depth. David develops a growth on his neck, which turns out to be cancer. However, his family choose not tell him this fact, which is just one of the many sources of conflict between him and his parents. I love how the story is told. The struggles David goes through growing up within this family are real and relatable. David (the character in the book) can be extraordinarily imaginative, which is shown throughout the story (i.e., his admiration for
Alice in Wonderland, which appears again towards the end of the story). In the end, the story has a great moral lesson -- your voice is more than the words that come out of your mouth. It is also your actions, what you do and how you do them, that speak for you. That is a great message to learn from a book about a child growing up.
The art is black, white, and gray, and in this story, it works perfectly. Some of the best frames in the book are when the author uses a direct light source on his character. For example, when David is in an elevator, and the doors open and close, he creates a fantastic effect by using this lighting technique. It happens a few times in the story, and it is definitely worth stopping to study the frame and look at the detail.
Finally, I believe that this story could only be told in this way. It just would not have been as effective if it had bee told in a traditional book. You need the art, combined with the story, David's vivid imagination, and the writer's control of his limited words to feel the full impact of the story. Telling the story of his memories works very nicely as a graphic novel. Yes, it did take me only about an hour to read the book, but I think that was too fast, and I plan to go back and read it again - taking more time to study each frame. I highly recommend this book for its great story and artwork, even if you know nothing about the author. By the time you are done reading, you will feel like you know him personally.
Stitches is three for three in my memoir requirements.
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Maus: A Survivor's Tale
Summary: "The Pulitzer Prize-winning
Maus tells the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and his son, a cartoonist coming to terms with his father's story. Vladek's harrowing narrative is woven into the author's account of his anguished relationship with is aging father." (from the back cover)
Review: Art Spiegelman's
Maus: A Survivor's Tale is a unique and unforgettable work of literature and has been described as memoir, biography, history, fiction, autobiography, or a mix of genres. It is a two-volume set of book-length graphic novels, which tells the story of the narrator, Artie, and his father Vladek, a Holocaust survivor.
Maus (trans: mouse) is an important example of both Holocaust literature and the graphic novel. The two volumes of
Maus are subtitled "My Father Bleeds History" and "And Here My Troubles Began"; they should be read together to get the biggest impact.
Artie is a comic book artist who is trying to create art that is meaningful, not just commercial. As the two volumes unfold, he gradually learns the full story of his father's history as a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust. There is a complex "book within the book" motif, since the main character is actually writing the book that is being read. Is the story accurate? Probably not, but as with all Holocaust literature, it is not about accuracy but the humanity or inhumanity of the story. It is almost certain that the elderly Vladek forgot, exaggerated, or hid details, just as it is certain that his son summarized and misunderstood the account.
The distinguishing premise of the book involves depicting the books' human characters as having animal heads. All the Jews have mice heads, the Germans are cats, the non-Jewish Poles pigs, the Americans dogs, etc. It is a visually provocative device, although not without problematic aspects. To his credit, Spiegelman addresses some of the ambiguities of this visual device in the course of the 2 volumes. For example, there is an extensive discussion between Artie and his wife, a Frenchwoman who converted to Judaism, regarding what kind of animal head she should have in the comic (rabbit, frog, mouse?).
The art is black and white and contains some stunning visual touches, as well as some truly painful and thought-provoking dialogue. Vladek is one of the most extraordinary characters in 20th century literature. As grim as the two books' subject matter is, there are some moments of humor and warmth.
What makes Spiegelman's work so moving is the juxtaposition of a supposedly lighthearted form, the comic strip, with the greatest evil and suffering in human history, the Holocaust. Spiegelman's parents miraculously survived the concentration camps, being among very few survivors, getting by on luck and (in the case of Vladek) a lot of resourcefulness. This is their story, from the point of view of the father, who lost nearly all of his relatives. With the Jews as mice and the Nazis as cats, this work pulls no punches in describing the true horrors of the Holocaust, and Spiegelman's minimalist artwork makes the images all the more disturbing. You don't get this kind of emotion, terror, and brutal honesty in standard written accounts of the period. But underneath the direct suffering of the Holocaust, the true theme of this book is the lasting effects on the Spiegelman family, including the father's lasting agony and the mental illness shared by both the author's mother and himself. The strained relationship between father and son are the true heart of this tremendous work. Overall,
Maus is a profound reflection on family ties, history, memory, and the role of the artist in society. I highly recommend this book.
Maus is also a three for three in my memoir requirements, even though this is not strictly a memoir.
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
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