I Was a Child by Bruce Eric Kaplan

I Was a Child is Bruce Eric Kaplan’s (BEK) memoir and is written in a stream-of-consciousness style with small, hand-drawn cartoons interspersed throughout the text. Each blurb is a recollection of an event, time, television show, piece of furniture in the house, anything and everything from BEK’s childhood.

I’m not familiar with BEK’s work but his bio talks about his cartoons appearing in The New Yorker. I can see why he’s so popular.

The drawings are simple but somehow manage to convey a great depth of emotion and meaning.

They reminded me of the small drawings in Roald Dahl‘s books. I looked up the illustrator for those and Google tells me it’s Quentin Blake.

Both share a sparse, black-line look with no color to bright up the design. However, there’s something very powerful about the pictures… it’s hard to describe.

I Was A Child may be a book that one has to read to really experience what it’s all about.

I’m not as old as the author, but I connected with many of his memories because, despite what other people may tell you, we were all children once.

This memoir is quite unique but if you like it, you may want to try Today is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life. It is more of a graphic novel than this, but it is also a memoir about growing up and change that is drawn with simplistic black and white panels.

I received a free advanced reader’s copy of this book through Goodreads First Reads. FTC guidelines: check!

Thanks for reading!

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