Russell, the protagonist of “Home After Dark.” David Small, courtesy of W.W. Norton David Small has written or illustrated more than three dozen children’s picture books, but his 2009 graphic memoir, Stitches, a National Book Award finalist, isn’t so appropriate for the young’uns. In cinematic style, Small depicts the psychological traumas of his childhood: a closeted lesbian mother whose pent-up bitterness filled the home with dread, and an emotionally distant radiologist father whose X-ray treatments of his son’s sinus problems gave the boy thyroid cancer.