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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
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I, PARROT

Elizabeth Haidle Deb Olin Unferth

Daphne is willing to risk everything to get her son back. Surreal, funny and deeply affecting, I, Parrot is the tale of mother, a son, forty-two endangered parrots, and a fierce search for redemption and a "freer world."
When Daphne loses custody of her son, she is willing to do whatever it takes to get him back?even if it means enlisting the help of the wayward love of her life, a trio of housepainters, a flock of passenger pigeons, a landlady from hell, a super-sized bag of mite-killing powder, and more parrots than she knows what to do with.

I, Parrot, by acclaimed author Deb Olin Unferth with stunning illustrations by artist Elizabeth Haidle, dips into the surreal with poignancy and humor. In this riveting, funny, and tragic graphic novel, Daphne must risk everything. Her quest is ultimately a tale about civilization's decline, the heartbreak of extinction, and the redemption found in individual revolution.

Deb Olin Unferth is the author of four books, including the story collection Wait Till You See Me Dance, out in March 2017. Her fiction has appeared in Harper's, The Paris Review, Granta, Vice, Tin House, NOON, and McSweeney's. She is the recipient of four Pushcart Prizes, a grant from Creative Capital for Innovative Literature, and she was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Elizabeth Haidle is a freelance artist based in Portland, Oregon. She is the creative director and designer for Illustoria magazine, a publication for creative kids and their grownups. Her concept art appears in the Labor Movement exhibit of the Smithsonian Museum and also educational video games produced by MidSchool Math. Past publications include Mind-Afire: the Visions of Tesla, written by Abigail Samoun, and Encyclopedia of the Exquisite, by Jessica Kerwin Jones.
Available products
Book

Published 2017-11-01 by Black Balloon Publishing/ Catapult

Book

Published 2017-11-01 by Black Balloon Publishing/ Catapult

Comments

I, Parrot beautifully renders the weird in-betweenness of life. It illuminates the messy: custody battles, insecticide hazards, the hairpin paths of love.

[A] winningly surreal collaboration... Unferth impresses with strong characterizations and a tightrope tragicomic tone. Haidle's spare, cartoony, Mary Blair-ish illustrations, impressively rendered in grayscale -especially the 20 different species of parrots and the characters' permanent, 'rosy' blush- and her retro-futuristic, all-caps style perfectly complement the colorful, off-kilter tale of a woman redirecting the sails of her story.

An intimate and contemplative reflection on the slow revelatory dawning of what it means to care for something or someone. It's unexpectedly funny, sad, scary, affirming and totally engrossing.

A lovingly crafted world of gray, at once complex and weightless.

A deftly observed, sad, and ultimately hopeful fable about civilization, wildness, and love.