I Was a Child: A Memoir [Paperback]

An illustrated memoir byrenowned New Yorker cartoonist Bruce Eric Kaplan.

“If The Little Prince had crash-landed, instead of in the Sahara, into a middle-class Jewish home in Maplewood, N.J. in the late 1960s, it might feel something like I Was a Child.”—The Hollywood Reporter
 
Bruce Eric Kaplan, also known as BEK, is one of the most celebrated and admired cartoonists in America.I Was a Childis the story of his childhood in suburban New Jersey, detailing the small moments we all experience: going to school, playing with friends, family dinners, watching TV on a hot summer night, and so on. It would seem like a conventional childhood, although Kaplan's anecdotes are accompanied by his signature drawings of family outings and life at home-road trips, milk crates, hamsters, ashtrays, a toupee, a platypus, and much more. Kaplan's cartoons, although simple, are never straightforward; they encompass an easy irony and dark humor that often cuts straight to the truth of experience. Brilliantly relatable and genuinely moving,I Was a Childis about our attempts to understand the mysteries that are our parents, our families, and ourselves.“[Bruce Eric Kaplan’s] memoir begins: I was a child, but I wasn't very good at it, and if you get what he means, then this is the book for you….in other words, and he renders his family's peculiarities so perfectly that they become universal….His recollections are never of anything extraordinary. They're deadpan, hilarious, and really quite moving.”
—The Philadelphia Inquirer

“[A] delightful memoir..[and] a funny and moving look at the figures that inspired Kaplan’s cartoon world.”
—The Wall Street Journal

“IfThe Little Princehad crash-landed, instead of in the Sahara, into a middle-class Jewish home in Malc2