Warning: You might need some intensive time with small, fluffy animals after you finish reading Stitches.

Why's that? While you might think that an author and illustrator who's won the Caldecott Medal, Christopher Medal, Alex Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, been nominated for the National Book Award, and had a #1 New York Times best seller is living a charmed life. But sometimes triumph follows trauma. And it doesn't get much more traumatic than David Small's childhood.

Stitches is Small's memoir about growing up in a nightmare and escaping it with, well, slightly less horrible nightmares. Growing up in 1950s Detroit, he had severe sinus problems, which his radiologist dad tried to cure with X-rays. That's right: The same technology that requires you to wear a heavy lead apron at the dentist was once thought of as a cure.

Because Small's dad, like other radiologists of the time, thought X-rays were harmless, painless, invisible wonder treatments, he freely irradiated his son. When David began to develop a lump on his neck at the age of eleven, his parents ignored it for three years—because, hey, what's a little tumor? Ain't no thang.

By the time David's neck began to bulge and they finally operated, the growth was cancerous, and the surgery necessitated removal of one of his vocal cords. Surprise: You can't talk without 'em. So when David woke up with no voice, he was baffled. After all, nobody ever told him he had cancer.

Small's horrific childhood was the second piece of graphic literature to be nominated for the National Book Award (the first was Gene Luen Yang's American Born Chinese), and it's easy to see why—Stitches is a devastating, beautifully rendered work of art that will haunt you long after you read it.

It will also convince you that you can overcome just about anything, especially if you have a passion to carry you through. Escapism can be dangerous, but it can also save your life when the world—or, heaven forbid, your family—is trying to kill you.

Who among us hasn't had a secret, or known someone was keeping a secret from us? Who hasn't wanted to say something but been unable to find the words? That's the story of David Small's life. Except in his case, he literally can't say the words, because the secret his parents kept from him took away his voice.

Just like his parents, David has a secret inner life, but his is made of pictures. But while his parents' secrets are dark and oppressive, the young artist dreams that his drawings will be his ticket out of the Detroit house of horrors he grows up in. We're not giving anything away when we tell you he succeeds—we're talking about his National Book Award-nominated graphic memoir, after all. In other words, this book shows secrets from two angles: as stifling and oppressive, but also as well-tended dreams.

It's an unusual twist on secrets, and just might make you think differently about yours. Keeping your feelings about your crush to yourself is one thing, but what about the thing in the world you most long to do? Because whatever that is just might be your ticket to building the life you secretly yearn for.