Hummingbird Heart

HUMMINGBIRD HEART TRAVIS DANDRO

A deeply emotional visual representation of a teenager’s confusion. 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.

TRAVIS DANDRO

Travis Dandro was born in 1974 in Leicester, Massachusetts. He started publishing his first comic strip, Twerp, in the local newspaper when he was thirteen, earning $15 a week. After graduating from Montserrat College of Art in 1996, he continued drawing comics, his work appearing in dozens of college newspapers across the United States and Canada. He also self-published Journal, which was cited as a notable comic in the 2010 and 2012 editions of The Best American Comics. King of King Court is his first graphic novel. Dandro lives in Maine with his wife and three sons.