Hummingbird Heart

by Travis Dandro

Overview

Still reeling from the death by suicide of his drug-addicted father, Travis moves in with his grandmother to become her caretaker as she battles cancer. Meanwhile, he tries to live a typical teen life of pulling pranks, occasional shoplifting, dating, and endless drives through the twisting backroads of Central Massachusetts with Nirvana’s Nevermind as the soundtrack. When the police intervene after a prank backfires, the boys realize that their time as children is rapidly disappearing and they may never fully understand each other as they move apart. After his Lynd Ward Prize-winning graphic novel, King of King Court, explored the power that parents hold over their children’s emotional lives, Travis Dandro employs his signature dream imagery and crass humor to tell the story of teenage independence and resilience as he prepares to head off to art school. Hummingbird Heart is a detailed and stylish account of a time of great uncertainty. Dandro’s densely crafted pages create a deeply emotional experience as his story swings from character confrontation to finely wrought domestic detail—a slapstick cafeteria-destroying brawl gives way to the beautifully rendered flight of the impossible hummingbird.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781770466463
Publisher:	Drawn & Quarterly
Publication date:	05/31/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	367
File size:	231 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Travis Dandro was born in Leicester, Massachusetts. He started publishing his first comic strip, Twerp, in the local weekly newspaper when he was 13 years old. In 1996 Travis graduated from Montserrat College of Art with a degree in fine art. Since then, his comics have appeared in dozens of college newspapers in the United States and Canada, and his first graphic novel, King of King Court, won the Lynd Ward Prize for graphic novel of the year. He currently lives in Belfast, Maine, with his sons.

Editorial Reviews

Travis Dandro uses words, pictures, pattern, and texture to conjure moments from his life that are at once specific and fleeting. In its remembrance of profound loss and deep love for friends and family, Hummingbird Heart beats fast but feels timeless.” —Jason Lutes, author of Berlin

“Dandro proves his ability to emulate any comic, from Krazy Kat to Popeye to Calvin; his insertions of a young Travis into the panels are especially engaging—and delightfully, conspicuously aspirational... Teens on the cusp of the leaving home for college will find plenty of resonating adventures here.” —Booklist

“Dandro’s flair for detail offers windows into the harshness all his characters face; while the story elements are simple—grief, teen angst—the telling is visually layered.” —Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“Though it meanders at time, the memoir does so thoughtfully and intentionally, compelling the reader to explore the space and feel an emptiness that needs filling. One hopes that, with Hummingbird Heart, Dandro has found a way to give his autobiographical avatar of Travis that fulfillment.” —Graphic Medicine

“Sharply recalled and ultimately engrossing.” —Kirkus

“This is a young artist and writer who has confidence in his storytelling powers.” —London Free Press

From the Publisher

2022-02-09
Graphic novelist Dandro looks back on the waning days of his 1990s adolescence.

In his visual narrative, made both ruminative and cinematic by sequences of silent moments and unpeopled scenes, the author retraces his inner and outer lives as, in the wake of his estranged father’s death by suicide, he helps care for his irascible grandma through her last days on the one hand and, on the other, takes joyrides punctuated by bursts of profane banter with two buddies as their high school careers wind down. Aside from some deadpan hilarity (“What is that?!” “My colostomy bag”) and a trip to a cartoon museum during which he imagines himself in the worlds of classic characters from Krazy Kat to Popeye, his artistic bent inclines toward oblique expressions of glum solitude—glimpses of a hummingbird through a window, pictures of empty rooms or streets, figures seen at a remove from high or low angles. But if his monochromatic art, being sketchy and packed into pages of often undifferentiated panels, takes some getting used to, the events it depicts fall into recognizable categories, and its elegiac mood will elicit strong responses in readers facing or recalling that liminal period in their own lives. Other than Dandro’s Vietnamese American friend, Zung, the cast is White.

Sharply recalled and ultimately engrossing. (Graphic memoir. 15-adult)

Kirkus Reviews