This is a moving childhood memoir from renowned children's picture book illustrator, David Small.  While his career has largely been devoted to serving children, this work reveals that it is likely that he was nourishing his own inner child, as his parents never did.  Stitches is a fairly dark and harrowing work, as are many childhood memoirs, it must be said.  It is executed entirely in pen and ink worked over with delicately nuanced ink washes that capture his pain.  Fans of Will Eisner's late, mature work (also, interestingly, published by Stitches' publisher, W.W. Norton) are herein especially encouraged to take a look, as it manages to achieve a similar emotional punch.  And it's garnered some pretty hefty praise from the likes of Jules Feiffer, Francoise Mouly – even Stan Lee! – but most of all, R. Crumb, who states, "David Small evokes the mad scientific world of the 1950s beautifully.  Small is an innocent lamb, a sensitive boy, caught in a nightmare situation.  Capturing body language and facial expression subtly, Stitches becomes in Small's skillful hands a powerful story, an emotionally charged autobiography."