I, Parrot

Starred review from November 13, 2017
Unferth (Wait Till You See Me Dance, Revolution) dexterously juggles pathos and humor in her debut graphic novel, an intimate and contemplative reflection on the slow revelatory dawning of what it means to care for something—or someone. Taking care of birds should be easy, right? Daphne’s desperate for a steady job and income so she can gain custody of her beloved son, Noah, but she didn’t expect to be overseeing 42 rare parrots, three existential house painters (all named Lee Anthony), an infestation of bird mites, and the judgmental parrot care guidebook that gives this graphic novel its title. Haidle’s artwork is a revelation: her exaggerated cartoon people (and almost-photorealistic parrots) are fluid and natural. But it’s her layouts that provoke and enthrall: trains of thought portrayed in puffy, round flowchart balloons, short staccato panels on a single page transforming into time-lapse montages, and Daphne’s dreams spreading from dark black clouds of flying birds into white, unbordered freedom. It’s unexpectedly funny, sad, scary, affirming and totally engrossing.

November 15, 2017
A woman finds herself when she loses 42 birds.Daphne works as an assistant to a woman who makes "positive-thought recordings," affirmative messages for people to listen to in order to "impede the roar of the unhappy mind." But she is occupied with her own unhappiness: her ex-husband and his new wife have been granted majority custody of their son, Noah. Her state doesn't get easier when she's asked to take care of her boss's 42 parrots, worth more than $100,000--some of which, her son notices, are members of a supposedly extinct species. Things go amusingly awry, and she must enlist the help of her hapless but well-meaning boyfriend, Laker, as well as an unreliable team of house painters, all named Lee Anthony. Like Daphne, Laker is a recovering alcoholic, frequently unemployed, and disproportionately inclined toward bad luck. When they discover the birds are infested with mites, their efforts to rid themselves of the problem are by turns hilarious and tragic, absurd and alarming. So, too, are their efforts to regain a healthy family structure and control over their lives. Unferth (Wait Till You See Me Dance, 2017, etc.) has written a heart-wrenching, occasionally unbelievable tale of family and feathers. The illustrations, by Haidle (Mind Afire, 2013), are beautiful. They are understated and playful without sacrificing texture or creativity. Each page is inventive; never strictly confined to the traditional graphic-novel structure of boxed illustrations, Haidle allows the characters and elements to burst from between the lines. Drawn in very few strokes, styled with elegant simplicity, Daphne, Noah, and Laker are expressive, emotional, and individual.A heartbreaking and hopeful story of a woman's messy mettle.

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October 15, 2017
Down-on-her-luck Daphne is trying to prove she's a fit parent for her young son, Noah, in this winningly surreal collaboration between Unferth (Wait Till You See Me Dance, 2017) and illustrator Haidle. Standing in Daphne's way are her ex-husband and his bitchy wife, her loving but not-so-great-on-paper boyfriend, Laker, and the 42 parrots she's just been put in charge of. Oh, and a massive, itchy case of parrot mites. Daphne's watching the chatty birds while their owner, her boss, who makes positive-reinforcement self-help recordings, is out of town. If Noah's dad or Daphne's boss, whom she calls the moon, finds out about the mites, it'll be curtains for her. And then things get worse. For her first work in comics, Unferth impresses with strong characterizations and a tightrope tragicomic tone. Haidle's spare, cartoony, Mary Blair-ish illustrations, impressively rendered in grayscaleespecially the 20 different species of parrots and the characters' permanent, rosy blushand her retro-futuristic, all-caps style perfectly complement the colorful, off-kilter tale of a woman redirecting the sails of her story.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)