The Prize jury said, “‘King of King Court’ grapples with the complexities of abuse and trauma while still leaving space for childhood innocence, play, and discovery. Dandro’s life is punctuated by moments of violence and shrouded in omnipresent tension that center around his biological father, ‘Dad Dave.’ Dandro’s deft intermingling of word and image exemplifies what a graphic novel can do by conveying a deeply personal story that could not be told as effectively in any other form. With his economy of words and his deceptively simple artwork, he leads us through a slow and quiet [tale]… Ultimately, Dandro creates a multilayered narrative that is both understanding of Dad Dave’s struggles and critical of his abusive actions, resulting in an honest story that invites the reader to sit with discomfort and to contend with ambiguity.”
The jury also honored Jerry Craft’s John Newbery Medal-winning “New Kid,” describing it as “a nuanced representation of an African-American boy by moving away from a reductive black-white binary that essentializes African American experiences, and “a subtle critique on class, race, privilege and access.”
Dandro will receive the $2500 prize and a two-volume set of Lynd Ward’s six novels at a future ceremony, the time and place of which yet to be announced. Dandro, born on August 2, 1974 in Leicester, Massachusetts, has been a published cartoonist since he was 13, when his first comic strip, “Twerp,” was featured in the local newspaper. A graduate of the Montserrat College of Art, his work has appeared in dozens of college newspapers across the US and Canada, and his self-published “Journal” appeared in the 2010 and 2012 editions of “The Best American Comics.” “King of King Court” was his first graphic novel. He lives in Maine with his wife and three sons.
