For graphic novelist Andre Frattino, Florida’s history, arts and culture is everything.
Frattino recently developed a graphic novel adaptation of “A Land Remembered,” celebrating the history of Florida that many have forgotten, reminding us of where we came from and where we are going. Frattino has put a twist on a historical treasure that will appeal to the next generation through a marriage of words and pictures.
Frattino said “A Land Remembered: A Graphic Novel” will stimulate not only nostalgia for Florida’s rich landscape, but also an appreciation for what we have left. Readers will be able to see the characters’ raw emotions and thought processes, the landscape of the past and how the relationship between human and land has evolved over time. The book will spread a powerful message of family, nostalgia and preservation that will speak to a new generation so that our history is not forgotten, but treasured, Frattino said.
A Florida native himself, Frattino was born and raised in Gainesville until he moved to Savannah, Georgia, at age 21 to study comic illustration at the Savannah College of Art and Design. He later attended UF, where he earned his master’s in art education. While at UF, Frattino worked as a comic illustrator for The Alligator. There, he created his own comic strip called “Son of a Gator”— a comic about Albert the Alligator’s son and his merry misadventures through college.
Frattino’s passion for the graphic arts has been a part of him for as long as he can remember. At age 5, he created his first illustrative story entitled“Honey Pot Bear and the Prize at the End of the Rainbow.”According to Frattino, his mother and father helped him create this story and made multiple copies to give out as Christmas presents. From then on, Frattino knew this was what he had to do.
“I was never without a pencil in my hand,” Frattino said. “I’d get in trouble in school for drawing in the margins of notes and homework assignments.”
Frattino demonstrates a deep passion for communication through the visual arts. He has been writing and illustrating graphic novels his entire life and continues to stay hungry for new stories and new ways of communicating his ideas to the world.
“If you really persist, you’re guaranteed to succeed in some form,” Frattino said.
Frattino’s passion inspired him to tell the story of “A Land Remembered” visually; the book tells a story of family, heritage, preservation and nostalgia. Frattino’s emphasis on the importance of family stems from the love and support of his parents.
“Family is a part of who I was; and who I am,” he said.
The novels captures three generations of the MacIvey family and how they struggle to survive in rapidly changing environments, Frattino said. From the Civil War Era to the 1960s, they move further and further away from their connection to nature and untamed land.
The author of the original novel, Patrick Smith, intended for readers to pass the novel down from family member to family member to showcase the importance of the MacIveys’ unity. Frattino said Florida has developed in different ways — some good and some bad. He believes that “A Land Remembered” tells a history of Florida that many of us have forgotten or have not even experienced.
“My mission in mind was to help Florida remember where it came from, what it used to be and how easy it is to forget,” Frattino said.
He tells stories that are fantastical yet based reality: stories that inspire us to remember where we come from. Frattino tells the stories of the people we pass on the street whom we have no thought about. He wants to show us that everyone has a story — a story that is unique, complicated and exciting.
An advocate for history, Frattino also gives audiences the chance to peer into the lives of characters in history whose stories haven’t been told much. His upcoming novel, “Simon Says,” centers around a man named Simon Wiesenthal, a Jewish artist who survived the Holocaust by painting Swastikas on train cars for the Nazis. After the tragedy of the Holocaust, he spends the rest of his life hunting down Nazis, earning him the nickname “Jewish James Bond.”
