Hummingbird Heart is the underwhelming and seemingly pointless follow-up to Travis Dandro’s excellent 2019 memoir King of King Court. Whereas the first book was about his drug-addicted father and the chaos he brought to Travis’ early life and family, Hummingbird Heart isn’t about anything nearly as compelling or standout.
It’s 1991 (cue references to Nirvana, The Simpsons and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves) and he’s a teen, doing all the usual teen things: working a part-time job, wondering about what he’s going to do in the future, dating, doing dumb things with your friends, etc. His gran’s also dying and that makes him sad. It’s so ordinary - this is most people’s experiences of their teen years; why does this need to be a memoir? Particularly as Dandro isn’t saying anything profound about any of it.
Dandro’s a fine cartoonist - the book is easy to read, well laid-out and paced, and certain pages are beautifully drawn. I especially enjoyed the Museum of Cartoon Art sequence where he draws in the styles of the greats, like Watterson, Schulz and McCay.
But Hummingbird Heart is about such unremarkable things that it feels entirely superfluous. If King of King Court contained the most interesting stuff of Dandro’s life, maybe he should consider using his cartooning talent to create fiction rather than continue making inane memoirs just because that’s how he found his initial success, especially given how he already seems to have run out of engaging material.
If you were a fan of King of King Court like me, don’t expect much from this unimpressive sequel.
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