My Dog Ginger Reviews Stitches

Ginger hugging Stitches

First off, I'd like to say when your two masters are writers, you get to be a bit of a literary snob. Nope, no rhyming poems for me and bad metaphors are like flees; sometimes no matter how hard you scratch, there's always more of them. Every day, I listen to my masters type away on their computers. My mom master is quiet and intense and stares hard into the screen, and sometimes, I have to roll onto my back and show her my tummy, so she returns from whatever poetry world she entered. My dad master, he insists on reading his work out loud to me and sometimes what he reads is good, and sometimes I howl and bark like I do when I see a squirrel on the pool cage.

One day, my dad master couldn't sleep so he went into his office and read this book with lots of pictures in it. I think it's called a graphic novel. He read the entire book in one night till it was four in the morning, a few hours before my breakfast. After he read the book, he made this breathy noise with his nose. I do the same after dinner. It means he's satisfied. I'm usually satisfied after dinner, too.

He left the book on the floor, and there it stayed for three months.

I couldn't help myself. While both my masters were away at work, I read the book. I mean, it was at my level and all, and I kept stepping on it, so I thought, why not? The title of the book was Stitches and it was drawn and written by David Smalls. There were lots of pictures in it, and some of the pictures were scary, like the crazy lawnmower people that come once a week with the crazy blowing machine. Still, I couldn't stop. I needed to know what happened to the main character; I needed to understand this family that seemed to hold so many secrets.

What I found disconcerting, especially for me because I'm a dog and my favorite thing in the world is to bark, were the silences in the book. There would be pages of drawings and no words at all. But those drawings were screaming. Those drawings illustrated devastation. Those silences were what made Stitches unforgettable, which was a pretty good feat because us dogs have short memories. At the core of this graphic novel was the way Small's family lived in silence and percolating anger and resentment and disquieting rage. At the core of this graphic novel was also a past that continually haunted Smalls.

In short--Four Paws Up for this book. I enjoyed it as much as I enjoy eating Milkbones and barking at the turtle outside the fence. I won't hurt it. I just want to play.


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Ginger is an eleven-year old cocker spaniel and is responsible for writing this bark-tastic review. Her work often appears in the backyard, and she likes to play hockey with her dog dish.