It's here! Browse the 2024 Penguin Christmas gift guide
Collecting Sticks

Collecting Sticks

Summary

Observer Graphic Novel of the Month

Collecting Sticks is a graphic novel about a family glamping trip. (It's like camping, but much more expensive.) Loosely based on actual events, but sometimes veering unexpectedly into fantasy, the story plays with the challenges nature presents to city folk as they forage for berries, get stuck up a tree, make perilous encounters with stinging wildlife, compete to build the best fire and discover the importance of finding good sticks. Also, it rains. It's about the human desire to get back to nature. Or to return to childhood and hit things with sticks.

Funny, moving, beautifully drawn, Collecting Sticks can stand beside Joff Winterhart’s classic graphic novel of family life, Days of the Bagnold Summer.

Reviews

  • This wonderfully well-observed graphic novel from cartoonist Decie is a must for anyone diving into the great outdoors this summer.
    Zoë Apostolides, Daily Telegraph

About the author

Joe Decie

Joe Decie has been detailing family life in comic-strip form for several years, through vignettes that capture beauty in the everyday and playfully mix autobiography with the absurd.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more