A startlingly beautiful retelling of Audubon's life. The imagery and visual storytelling is simply superb. I had not realized how little I knew about Audubon's life until I read this work. Moody, surprising, and informative.

beautifully, beautifully illustrated
love how the quotes are woven
cool, quirky weird dude, definitely more of an insidious legacy than is suggested at in this romantic portrayal, but nonetheless inspiring, i guess!

Very cool! Great art, nice story...good stuff.

"Jean-Jacques" Audubon was born in 1785 in Haiti, the illegitimate child of a Frenchman and a servant. As he grew up his father officially adopted him and sent him the the United States to make his mark as a businessman. Audubon did enjoy his time in the US and met and married a young woman but sadly all of his business ventures ended in ruins and he was even forced to spend some time in debtor's prison. Once he got out he turned his back on the world of investments and headed out to create a new a new encyclopedia of birds of the United States. This graphic biography captures much about the way Audubon worked and his struggles. In his preface the author freely admits that the reader may be surprised by Audubon's methods which involved shooting a lot of specimens before arranging the birds into natural poses with wires often depicting them eating, fighting and hunting and otherwise interacting in their environment. The illustrations are spectacular in this vivid account.

This is mostly nonfiction graphic novel about John James Audubon, a prominent ecologist with a focus on birds. I saw mostly nonfiction because we are told that there are events in the book that are fiction but are based on things Audubon claimed, but he was known to exaggerate. Sometimes it worked metaphorically but other times it felt out of place.

My favorite scenes were when Audubon was in the forest. These pages channeled an appreciation for nature which is what I ultimately wanted from this book. However the scenes with heavy dialogue I felt were less interesting but this could be my own bias.

It may be worth mentioning that Audubon does not seem like a good person. He abandoned his wife and kids for 30+ years if I am not mistaken and regularly shot large quantities of the birds he admires so much. This second point can be attributed to society’s view of hunting at the time but it did feel rather jarring within the novel.

Ultimately I liked this book but didn’t love it, however I would still recommend giving it a try if you are interested because it is a pretty book and a relatively short time investment compared to a traditional novel.

As an added bonus I’m using it as reference for some illustrations while I am trying to practice my art skills!