SATA
ENTRY TYPE:
WORK TITLE: Creature: Paintings, Drawings, and Reflections
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.shauntan.net/
CITY: Melbourne
STATE:
COUNTRY: Australia
NATIONALITY: Australian
LAST VOLUME: SATA 368
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaun_Tan; winner, 2011 Astrid Lindgren Prize.
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1974, in Fremantle, Western Australia, Australia; father an architect.
EDUCATION:University of Western Australia, B.A. (with honours), 1995.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Artist, writer, and illustrator. Concept artist on films, including Horton Hears a Who and WALL-E; codirector of The Lost Thing (short film), Passion Pictures Australia, 2010. Established Shaun Tan Award for Young Artists in 2003. Exhibitions: Work exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide, including at Central Goldfields Art Gallery, Maryborough, Queensland, Australia, 2012.
AWARDS:L. Ron Hubbard Illustrators of the Future Contest winner, 1992; Ditmar Award for best professional artwork, 1995; Ditmar Award for best cover artwork, 1996, and 2000, for The Coode St. Review of Science Fiction; Crichton Award, 1998, and Spectrum Gold Award for Book Illustration, 2000, both for The Viewer by Gary Crew; Aurealis Coverners’ Award for excellence, Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Picture Book of the Year designation, and Spectrum Gold Award for Book Illustration, all 1999, all for The Rabbits by John Marsden; CBCA Honor Book designation and APA Design Award, both 2000, both for Memorial by Crew; Best Artist Award, World Fantasy Convention, 2001; Ditmar Awards for best artwork and best professional achievement, and CBCA Picture Book of the Year designation, all 2001, all for The Lost Thing; Patricia Wrightson Prize, New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards, and CBCA Honour Book designation, both 2002, both for The Red Tree; Book of the Year designation, New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards, and World Fantasy Award for Best Artist, both 2007, and Angoulême International Comics Festival Prize for Best Comic Book, Boston Globe/Horn Book Award Special Citation, and Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist and Best Related Book, all 2008, all for The Arrival; Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis, 2009, and South Australian Premier’s Literary Award, 2010, both for Tales from Outer Suburbia; Best Short award, Melbourne International Film Festival, Yoram Gross Animation Award, Sydney International Film Festival, and Cristal Award for Best Short Film, Annecy International Animation Festival, all 2010, and Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, 2011, all for The Lost Thing; Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist, 2010; Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, 2011; CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal, 2020, for Tales from the Inner City.
WRITINGS
The Lost Thing was adapted for puppet theater, produced in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia, 2004; The Red Tree was adapted for puppet theater, produced in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 2004, as a stage musical produced at Australian Chamber Orchestra, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 2008, and for puppet theater, produced in Perth, Western Australia, Australia, 2011; The Arrival was adapted for puppet theater, produced in Fremantle, Western Australia, Australia, 2006, and for orchestra, Sydney, 2010; The Rabbits was adapted for opera and premiered at the 2015 Perth International Arts Festival.
SIDELIGHTS
An Australian writer and illustrator with Chinese and Malay heritage, Shaun Tan is perhaps best known for his wordless graphic novel The Arrival, “a remarkable and skilful work of art,” according to London Sunday Times reviewer Nicolette Jones. Tan has provided the artwork for more than two dozen works by such celebrated authors as John Marsden and Gary Crew, and he has released a host of self-illustrated books as well. In 2010, Tan received the South Australian Premier’s Literary Award for his Tales from Outer Suburbia, the first time that honor was bestowed upon an author of fiction for children and young adults. A year later, he won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, a prestigious international prize, and in 2020 he was awarded the Kate Greenaway Medal, one of children’s literature’s highest honors.
Tan’s works are noted for their mysterious, meticulous artwork and address such provocative themes as colonial imperialism and dislocation. Jan Meredith, writing in the Brisbane Courier-Mail, maintained that his “work is sophisticated, disturbing and curiously heartening in the same way there is an uncomfortable consolation to be found in the hard intelligence of the Brothers Grimm.” “As an artist he combines real drawing skill with a profoundly off-kilter imagination, his characters, human and otherwise, are at the same time funny and enticing,” Neil Gaiman observed in discussing Tan’s oeuvre for the London Guardian; “as a writer and storyteller he creates stories, sometimes wordless, always told with an economy of words, which manage to be both alienating and embracing.”
Born in 1974, Tan grew up near Perth, Western Australia and began drawing and sketching at an early age, influenced by his father, an architect. “I learnt some of my style from him,” Tan recalled to London Guardian contributor Michelle Pauli, “including the extreme attention to detail. There’s that sense that if you do something it has to be well-crafted and it’s more fun that way and you get a better thing at the end.” As a young adult he became interested in science fiction and fantasy tales. “When I was about eleven I discovered reruns of The Twilight Zone on TV late at night and became hooked,” he told Locus interviewer Karen Haber. Tan was especially taken with the works of Ray Bradbury and “ending up reading virtually everything he wrote during my teens. I loved his intriguing fairytale places, at once sensual and sinister, as convincing and unbelievable as dreams.”
Tan’s artistic talents were recognized early; at age sixteen he was illustrating for science-fiction periodicals and he won the 1992 L. Ron Hubbard Illustrators of the Future contest two years later. “Seeing your work in print is exciting, especially when you’re young,” he told Pauli. “It’s that feeling that you have some effect on the world outside of your immediate neighbourhood.” In 1995, Tan graduated from the University of Western Australia with joint degrees in fine arts and English literature, and he worked briefly as a freelance illustrator before entering the literary world.
Tan first began illustrating texts by other authors, among them Marsden, author of The Rabbits, and Crew, with whom he has collaborated on several books. The Rabbits comments on the impact European immigrants had on Australia, likening them to the plague-like rabbits that overwhelmed many of the continent’s native species. “For an Australian reader,” Karen Jameyson stated in Horn Book, “the power of the book comes from the compact brevity of the words in combination with Tan’s elaborate, intricate paintings and provocative design. The critic also cited “Tan’s elaborate, intricate paintings and provocative design” as a strength of the work, and Nancy Palmer wrote in School Library Journal that the illustrator’s “stunning ink, oil, and wash artwork … adds complexity [to] the visual experience of a culture and landscape being overrun.”
In illustrating Crew’s The Viewer, Tan depicts a different type of apocalyptic landscape, one that is seen through the lens of a strange View-master toy that is found by a youngster. “Tan loads his marvelous, shadowy images with post-apocalyptic clutter,” wrote a contributor to Publishers Weekly in reviewing the book. Memorial, also by Crews, concerns an Australian boy’s efforts to stop the removal of a tree planted by his grandfather to commemorate the soldiers who fought at the battle of Gallipoli in World War I. Cindy Lord, critiquing the work in Brisbane’s Courier-Mail, observed that “Tan’s intimate and well-mannered illustrations give the book a Queensland flavour and bring new life to a dull topic. Anyone who has ever admired the Moreton Bay fig will revel in these exquisite pictures.”
Tan’s original self-illustrated books include The Playground and The Lost Thing, the latter of which explores the idea of not fitting in. Nicolette Jones, writing in the London Sunday Times, described The Lost Thing as “illustrated with a bizarre and extremely skilled collage” and stated that, although the narrator—who finds an odd charm on the beach and is told to discard it—might not perceive a moral in the tale of her adventures readers certainly will. Concluding her review of the book in School Library Journal, Teresa Pfeifer called Tan “a singular talent.”
Tan’s The Red Tree also delves into ideas of loneliness and isolation, this time depicting a young girl who suffers from childhood depression. One day, a red tree begins to sprout in the girl’s room, and as it grows the girl grows increasingly hopeful about her situation. A Kirkus Reviews contributor called The Red Tree “an imaginative, sad, and ultimately uplifting tale of very few words and extraordinary images.”
With The Arrival, Tan gained international attention, receiving a Hugo Award nomination and the Angoulême International Comics Festival Prize. An ode to his father, who was born in Malaysia and settled in Australia, the 128-page graphic novel follows the voyage of an immigrant to a strange and fantastical new world. The main character writes home often, looking forward to the day when his family can join him. Like many others who have journeyed to this land, he is fleeing an intolerable situation at home and hopes to find freedom and opportunity. The man encounters a world full of odd creatures and kindhearted individuals who help him adjust to his new surroundings, which are at once exhilarating and incomprehensible.
“Of course, there are a lot of different immigrant experiences, both positive and negative,” Tan noted in discussing The Arrival in his Boston Globe/Horn Book acceptance speech. “There are different reasons for leaving and arriving, and an even greater variety of problems faced at all levels of existence, from buying a bus ticket to raising a family—or indeed rescuing one. I suppose this is what interested me: the immigrant experience seems to contain every variety of emotional, intellectual, and spiritual challenge likely to happen to a human being; everything is called into question.”
“By flawlessly developing nuances of human feeling and establishing the enigmatic setting, [Tan’s book] compassionately describes an immigrant’s dilemma,” wrote a contributor to Publishers Weekly. In Kliatt, Jennifer Sweeney considered The Arrival an “exquisite tale of imaginatively mastered fantasy,” and a Kirkus Reviews contributor called it “an unashamed paean to the immigrant’s spirit, tenacity and guts, perfectly crafted for maximum effect.” Jesse Karp, writing in Booklist, concluded that “ The Arrival proves a beautiful, compelling piece of art, in both content and form.” Tan’s sepia-toned drawings also drew praise; Julia Eccleshare in the London Guardian applauded his “carefully observed and finely drawn narrative illustrations.”
In Tales from Outer Suburbia, Tan collects fifteen short tales, each of which describes a rather bizarre event occurring under familiar circumstances. In one instance, a water buffalo dispenses advice to neighborhood children; in another, a tiny, leaf-like creature stays with a family as a foreign exchange student. “Each story is an exercise in narrative concision—the characters are vivid and original, the plots blend logic and whimsy, and the endings always pay off, if never quite the way you expect,” remarked Hugo Lindgren in the New York Times Book Review. “These are fairy tales for modern times, in which there is valor, love and wisdom,” a critic in Kirkus Reviews stated, and School Library Journal critic Douglas P. Davey called Tales from Outer Suburbia “a small treasure, or, rather, a collection of treasures.”
In The Bird King: An Artist’s Notebook, Tan offers a collection of sketches, doodles, and experimental designs for projects as well as his musings about the creative process. “Unmistakable are his flawless craftsmanship, his organically industrial yet timeless aesthetic, and his lyrically haunting style and tone,” Jesse Karp noted in Booklist. A Publishers Weekly critic described the work as “a treasure trove for any young artist who wants to know more about how ideas are captured on paper.”
Rules of Summer finds an older brother setting rules for himself and his younger brother to follow. Tan’s illustrations show the reasons behind the rules. Kiera Parrott, reviewer in School Library Journal, commented: “The sophistication of the visual narrative paired with the simplicity of the text invites multiple readings.” Parrott also described the book as “sumptuous and sincere.” “This is an extraordinary picture book, an aesthetic object, with much to enjoy, respond to, think and talk about,” asserted Jane Doonan in School Librarian. Booklist critic Sarah Hunter remarked: “Tan’s mesmerizing, gorgeous art is as beautiful and entrancing as ever.”
The Singing Bones: Inspired by Grimms’ Fairy Tales features photographs of seventy-five sculptures by Tan, representing scenes from fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm. In an interview with Robyn Henderson, contributor to the Iowa Review website, Tan explained how he chose what to sculpt. He stated: “I mainly looked for a certain dreamlike aspect that kept them in my memory. Not necessarily something that was easy to illustrate, but rather something hard to explain in logical terms, or even moral terms. Some of them I did not particularly like as such, but I also had to acknowledge that they had something truthful to say about human nature, no matter how dark. They represented things that felt as though they needed to be represented.” Writing in School Library Journal, Jane Miller suggested: “The book is expertly minimalist, providing potential opportunities for discussion of story elements, art appreciation, and philosophy for a wide age range.” Doonan, the School Librarian contributor, remarked: “ The Singing Bones is a very rich resource: a treasure chest of entertaining stories, an inspiration for art work, a prompt for discussion and research, [and] a handsome beautifully designed book.” Referring to Tan, Booklist reviewer Summer Hayes commented: “Expect his fans to line up for this collection of his sculptural work.” “ The Singing Bones will appeal to fans of history and art, as well as lovers of fantasy and fairytales,” asserted Kimberly Barbour in Voice of Youth Advocates. Referring to the sculptures, a Publishers Weekly critic stated: “Rather than simply represent what happens in these stories, these pieces embody their power.” Betsy Hearner, reviewer in Horn Book called the volume a “thoughtful compendium.”
With Tales from the Inner City, a book of illustrated short stories, Tan was awarded the prestigious Kate Greenaway Medal. Many of the stories feature animal protagonists, including orcas, frogs, bears, and rhinos. Luann Toth, contributor to School Library Journal, commented: “This is a thoughtful and inviting examination of some big questions, without professing to have all the answers.” “In these uneasy, strange visions, moments of beauty, and even a bleak, futurological kind of joy, abides,” suggested a Publishers Weekly contributor. Hayes, the Booklist critic, remarked: “Beautiful and strange, this collection is unique in both vision and execution.” Reviewing the volume in BookPage, Dean Schneider asserted: “Readers may well find this one of the most amazing books they have ever read.”
In Cicada, the titular insect works in a large office building with humans as coworkers. After years of being treated unfairly by his employers, the cicada is sent off the office’s roof. Instead of tragedy, the cicada meets a more colorful fate. A Publishers Weekly reviewer suggested: “Tan’s story could be regarded as one that holds out the hope of liberation for every mistreated foreign laborer.” “Simultaneously sobering and uplifting, it will lead thoughtful readers to contemplate othering in their own lives,” commented a critic in Kirkus Reviews.
A story from Tan’s Tales from Outer Suburbia gets full billing as the stand-alone picture book Eric. The narrator and his mother—never appearing in the illustrations—tell the reader about a curious little creature who visited them as a foreign exchange student. Little more than an inches-tall shadow with a leaf-shaped head and an unpronounceable name, the creature lets the narrator’s family call him Eric, and instead of inhabiting the guest room they prepared, he makes himself at a home in a teacup in the pantry. After experiencing the quirks of Eric’s stay and lamenting his departure, the narrator and Mum find the pantry adorned with a pleasant surprise. A Kirkus Reviews writer, praising Tan as “ever sensitive to the outsider,” found that with Eric his “singular imagination invokes appreciation for the imprint that lingers from someone special, even after separation.”
Dog is also a tale from an earlier collection, Tales from the Inner City. This book uses generations’ worth of connections between dogs and their owners, including through heartbreak, to explore and celebrate the profound relationship between human and canine kind. A reviewer on Noveltea Corner—noting that Tan was inspired by a news clipping with a photo of a dog whose owner had died in a house fire—called Dog “gorgeous” and concluded: “For such a short and simple story (on the surface), the themes are complex, beautiful and thought-provoking.”
Tan notes that the picture-book format suits his talents well. “Picture books are very similar to short animation, or a typical painting exhibition … , or an adult short story,” he remarked to Chuan-Yao Ling in World Literature Today. “It just so happens that the vast majority of picture books are for young children, but I think this is just a cultural convention—it varies from country to country. Artists’ books demonstrate that the form itself is open to all levels of sophistication, constrained only by two ingredients, words and pictures. Of course, the interest in ‘picture books for older readers’ is growing all the time, so I think the question of audience is becoming less of an issue, thankfully.”
[OPEN NEW]
The COVID-19 pandemic led to shutdowns across the globe, but they were particularly severe in Australia. Cut off from his studio and stranded at home, Tan started organizing the drawings and sketches in his notebooks. The result is Creature: Paintings, Drawings, and Reflections, a collection of some of Tan’s best-known illustrations as well as more than one hundred unpublished examples drawn over a twenty-five-year period. The idea of “creature” ties the work together, and Tan has added notes and essays about his creative process and his fascination with non-human creatures. In talking with All Things Considered, Tan described what he hopes children will take from the book: “Here’s an adult that never stopped drawing funny creatures and actually figured out something serious to say about them.”
Andrea Lipinski, in School Library Journal, described the pieces as “haunting” and “thought-provoking,” and she wrote that the book will appeal to those “looking for ideas on how to find inspiration and channel their own creativity.” Writing for Booklist, Jesse Karp was more enthusiastic, calling it a “wondrous collection” that is “ideal for burgeoning artists and storytellers of all stripes, as well as the curious and open-minded.”
[CLOSE NEW]
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Bookbird, October, 2011, Shaun Tan, “The Accidental Graphic Novelist,” p. 1, Linnet Hunter, “The Artist as Narrator: Shaun Tan’s Wondrous Worlds,” p. 10, and Lien Devos, Not All That’s Modern Is Post: Shaun Tan’s Grand Narrative,” p. 17.
Booklist, May 1, 2003, Gillian Engberg, review of The Red Tree, p. 1589; September 1, 2007, Jesse Karp, review of The Arrival, p. 115; November 1, 2007, Stephanie Zvirin, review of The Haunted Playground, p. 46; December 15, 2007, Carolyn Phelan, review of Trapped, p. 48; December 1, 2008, Jesse Karp, review of Tales from Outer Suburbia, p. 50; April 1, 2011, Jesse Karp, review of Lost and Found: Three by Shaun Tan, p. 63; November 1, 2012, Jesse Karp, review of The Bird King: An Artist’s Notebook, p. 63; April 15, 2014, Sarah Hunter, review of Rules of Summer, p. 50; July 1, 2016, Summer Hayes, review of The Singing Bones: Inspired by Grimms’ Fairy Tales, p. 49; September 15, 2018, Summer Hayes, review of Tales from the Inner City, p. 56; October 15, 2022, Jesse Karp, review of Creature: Paintings, Drawings, and Reflections, p. 44.
BookPage, October, 2018, Dean Schneider, review of Tales from the Inner City, p. 26.
Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, May, 2011, Karen Coats, review of Lost and Found, p. 443.
Courier-Mail (Brisbane, Queensland, Australia), July 29, 2000, Cindy Lord, review of Memorial, p. M6; September 16, 2000, Jan Meredith, “Black & Tan,” p. M7.
Daily Telegraph (Surry Hills, New South Wales, Australia), January 24, 2004, Bron Sibree, “Journeyman Arrives,” p. 32.
Guardian (London, England), February 2, 2008, Julia Eccleshare, review of The Arrival, p. 20; May 2, 2009, S.F. Said, review of Tales from Outer Suburbia, p. 14; July 27, 2009, Michelle Pauli, “Shaun Tan’s Unexpected Details”; December 2, 2011, “In Conversation: Neil Gaiman Talks to Shaun Tan.”
Horn Book, May, 1999, Karen Jameyson, review of The Rabbits, p. 364; November-December, 2007, Roger Sutton, review of The Arrival, p. 669; January-February, 2009, Lolly Robinson, review of The Arrival, and Shaun Tan, transcript of Boston Globe/Horn Book Award acceptance speech, p. 29; March-April, 2009, Roger Sutton, review of Tales from Outer Suburbia, p. 204; May-June, 2011, Jonathan Hunt, review of Lost and Found, p. 77; May-June, 2014, Jonathan Hunt, review of Rules of Summer, p. 75; January-February, 2015, author interview, p. 33; September-October, 2016, Betsy Hearne, review of The Singing Bones, p. 127; November-December, 2018, Patrick Gall, review of Tales from the Inner City, p. 91.
Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2003, review of The Red Tree, p. 148; January 1, 2005, review of The Lost Thing, p. 58; September 1, 2007, review of The Arrival; December 1, 2012, review of The Bird King; September 1, 2018, review of Tales from the Inner City; November 15, 2018, review of Cicada; September 15, 2020, review of Eric.
Kliatt, September, 2007, Jennifer Sweeney, review of The Arrival, p. 30.
Locus, December, 2001, Karen Haber, “Shaun Tan: Out of Context.”
Mail on Sunday (London, England), May 11, 2008, Andrew Collins, “Beards, Beer and Real Birds,” review of The Arrival, p. 12.
New York Times Book Review, November 11, 2007, Gene Lang Yuen, review of The Arrival, p. 21; November 8, 2009, Hugo Lindgren, review of Tales from Outer Suburbia, p. 25.
Publishers Weekly, January 27, 2003, review of The Red Tree, p. 259; January 5, 2004, review of The Rabbits, p. 61; May 3, 2004, review of The Viewer, p. 192; July 16, 2007, review of The Arrival, p. 166; September 8, 2008, review of Pretty Monsters, p. 51; November 3, 2008, review of Tales from Outer Suburbia, p. 59; December 10, 2012, review of The Bird King, p. 63; August 15, 2016, review of The Singing Bones, p. 74; December 2, 2016, review of The Singing Bones, p. 111; August 27, 2018, review of Tales from the Inner City, p. 119; October 15, 2018, review of Cicada, p. 137.
Resource Links, April, 2003, Antonia Gisler, review of The Red Tree, p. 7; December, 2003, Adriane Pettit, review of The Rabbits, p. 5; April, 2004, Antonia Gisler, review of The Viewer, p. 3; October, 2004, Joanne de Groot, review of Memorial, p. 3; January 31, 2005, review of The Lost Thing, p. 68; June, 2005, Anne Hatcher, review of The Lost Thing, p. 9.
School Librarian, summer, 2014, Jane Doonan, review of Rules of Summer, p. 108; summer, 2017, Jane Doonan, review of The Singing Bones, p. 122.
School Library Journal, April, 2003, Liza Graybill, review of The Red Tree, p. 140; March, 2004, Dona Ratterree, review of The Viewer, p. 204; April, 2004, Nancy Palmer, review of The Rabbits, p. 119; December, 2004, Ellen Fader, review of Memorial, p. 144; May, 2005, Teresa Pfeifer, review of The Lost Thing, p. 140; September, 2007, Rick Margolis, “Stranger in a Strange Land: Shaun Tan’s The Arrival May Be the Most Brilliant Book of the Year,” p. 34, and Alana Abbott, review of The Arrival, p. 225; February, 2008, Bethany A. Lafferty, reviews of Trapped and The Haunted Playground, both p. 113; March, 2009, Douglas P. Davey, review of Tales from Outer Suburbia, p. 156; May, 2014, Kiera Parrott, review of Rules of Summer, p. 96; July, 2016, Jane Miller, review of The Singing Bones, p. 73; October, 2018, Luann Toth, review of Tales from the Inner City, p. 74; December, 2022, Andrea Lipinski, review of Creature: Paintings, Drawings, and Reflections, p. 103.
Sunday Mail (Adelaide, South Australia, Australia), April 25, 2010, Vicky Edwards, review of Eric, p. 2.
Sunday Times (London, England), May 20, 2001, Nicolette Jones, review of The Lost Thing, p. 46; December 30, 2007, Nicolette Jones, review of The Arrival, p. 48; March 8, 2009, Nicolette Jones, review of Tales from Outer Suburbia, p. 50.
Voice of Youth Advocates, August, 2016, Kimberly Barbour, review of The Singing Bones, p. 81.
World Literature Today, September-October, 2008, Chuan-Yao Ling, “A Conversation with Illustrator Shaun Tan,” p. 44.
ONLINE
All Things Considered, https://www.npr.org (November 3, 2022), Elizabeth Blair, “Shaun Tan’s Curious Creatures Are Just Looking for Companionship.”
Australian Edge, http://www.australianedge.net/ (October, 2008), author interview.
Financial Times, https://www.ft.com/ (August 19, 2016), Lorien Kite, author interview.
Iowa Review, https://iowareview.org/ (December 7, 2016), Robyn Henderson, author interview.
Noveltea Corner, https://novelteacorner.com/ (November 3, 2020), review of Dog.
Pin, http://www.thepin.org/ (February 4, 2019), author interview.
Publishers Weekly,https://www.publishersweekly.com/ (February 14, 2013), Antonia Saxon, author interview.
Research Group on Collective Trauma and Healing, Stanford University website, https://traumaandhealing.stanford.edu/ (January 17, 2015), Golnar Nabizadeh, author interview.
Scholastic website, http://www.scholastic.com/ (January 1, 2013), “Shaun Tan.”
School Library Journal, http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/ (February 24, 2011), Chelsey Philpot, “Shaun Tan Takes Home an Oscar.”
Shaun Tan website, http://www.shauntan.net (February 17, 2021).*
Shaun Tan to Emily in Paris: reach for books as worthy gifts
By AGENCY
BOOKS
Friday, 23 Dec 2022
8:53 PM MYT
Related News
‘Somebody may call the police’: Chinese Nobel Prize winner Mo Yan turns to ChatGPT to beat writer’s blockCHINA 12h ago
‘Somebody may call the police’: Chinese Nobel Prize winner Mo Yan...
BOOKS 1d ago
Literary world welcomes Malaysian author Tan Twan Eng's new book
TRUE OR NOT 1d ago
QuickCheck: Are scammers impersonating a famous bookstore to...
An artwork by Shaun Tan titled 'The Birth Of Commerce (2018). His new book 'Creature' offers a collection of previously unpublished and rarely-seen paintings and drawings, accompanied by notes detailing the Australian artist's fascination with non-human beings. Photo: Shaun Tan
Books are an easy gift choice, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be fresh. There’s always a great selection around the holidays for a range of ages and interests.
Some ideas:
Creature, by Shaun Tan. It’s as if, Tan writes, “I need to throw the artistic pebble far across a pond of weirdness in order to see some meaning in the ripples ...” Those words in the introduction of his new book speak volumes. The artist, writer and filmmaker from Perth, Australia, has collected his dreamy, sometimes eerie paintings and drawings. Tan reflects at length on his childhood in thoughtful text.
ADVERTISING
Regeneration: Black Cinema, 1898-1971, edited by Doris Berger and Rhea L. Combs. This companion to an exhibition of the same name at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles focuses on independent film. Interviews with Charles Burnett, Julie Dash, Ava DuVernay and more. Essays, glamour portraits and a chronology by year included. The goal: To provide a more expansive view of how American cinema has been shaped by African American creative expression.
Ugly-Cute, by Jennifer McCartney. Is there beauty in just about anything? McCartney thinks so. She has put together a small-in-stature, full-color look at “cuglies”: oft-underappreciated species both well known and obscure. Gaze upon the male star-nosed mole and its 22 pink, fleshy appendages in place of a face. McCartney filled her little book with bite-size facts and fun quizzes.
Africa In Fashion, by Ken Kweku Nimo. The Ghanaian researcher and designer explores the complex role the continent plays in the global fashion worlds past and present. He spotlights a new wave of African talent while looking back on vast textile, craft and embellishment traditions that are hundreds of years old. Nimo also delves into the potential of Africa as a luxury hub. Also consider Africa Fashion, which accompanies an exhibition of the same name at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
The Crown In Vogue, by Robin Muir and Josephine Ross. Published for the late queen’s Platinum Jubilee, the two take readers through more than 200 images from British Vogue of the British royal family, starting in the early 20th century. At some point, every last one of the top royals graced the magazine’s pages, starting with the queen mother on through to Prince Harry and Meghan. With a range of commentary, from Evelyn Waugh to Zadie Smith.
STARPICKS
Making it a reality
Emily In Paris: The Official Cookbook, by Kim Laidlaw. Filled with 75 recipes inspired by the Netflix series. Lots of food porn here, along with photos of ex-pat Emily (Lily Collins) as fans await Season 3. Remember Gabriel’s omelette? It’s in there. How about that moment Emily was struggling to pronounce un pain au chocolate? The tasty croissant is included, too.
It Starts With Us, by Colleen Hoover. She has millions of fans on TikTok and elsewhere who eagerly awaited this sequel to her bestselling It Ends With Us. Her latest story of a dramatic love triangle and a woman’s struggle against domestic abuse helped cement her status on TikTok and made her the country’s most popular fiction writer.
The Pigeon Will Ride The Roller Coaster, by Mo Willems. The determined blue pigeon with seven playful books on his resume is back with a not-so-topsy-turvy lesson in managing expectations. This time around, he’s set on riding a roller coaster as he plots out the process: buying a ticket, waiting in line, the possibility of the bad-tummy dizzies. What he gets instead might surprise you. Great for kids 3 to 5.
Women Holding Things, by Maira Kalman. The artist, designer and bestselling author has expanded a booklet of the same name that raised money to combat hunger. True to its title, Kalman’s paintings and ruminations feature women who often do the job of holding things together. A woman holds a baby. A woman holds court. Kalman includes a painting of Virginia Woolf, who’s “barely holding it together.” She writes of the book’s last image, a girl with pink balloons: “Hold on.”
Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman with illustrations by Chris Malbon. This dark urban fantasy from 1996 focuses on the dispossessed as the reader is taken into London Below, a secret world that exists in parallel with the London we know. Gaiman wrote the novel after the BBC made it into a TV series. He wrote in 2005 that the story’s goal was to move adults as he was so moved by “Alice in Wonderland,” the Narnia books and “The Wizard of Oz” as a kid. A special edition in a slipcase with a new introduction by Susanna Clarke.
Ice Cold. A Hip Hop Jewelry History, by Vikki Tobak. A photographic review of how hip hop helped redefine luxury with its over-the-top culture of bling. At the beginning, there was Run-DMC’s gold Adidas pendants and Eric B. & Rakim’s dookie rope chains and Mercedes medallions. They were followed by the likes of Pharrell Williams, Jay-Z, Gucci Mane and Cardi B. There’s a foreword by Slick Rick and essays by A$AP Ferg, LL Cool J, Kevin “Coach K’ Lee and Pierre “P” Thomas of Quality Control Music.
Adrift: America In 100 Charts, by Scott Galloway. How did the country land here? The professor of marketing at New York University explores that and other key questions starting in 1945 and landing in the present. Brief text accompanies his simple charts on a range of subjects, from the perception vs reality of the country’s crime rate to the earning potential of prospective male partners. The book isn’t for high-thinking statisticians but it’s full of conversation starters for the rest of us. –
Shaun Tan
Article
Talk
Read
Edit
View history
Tools
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Shaun Tan
Shaun Tan 2011-05-22 002.jpg
Shaun Tan in 2011
Born 1974 (age 48–49)
Fremantle, Western Australia, Australia
Nationality Australian
Area(s) Writer, Penciller, Artist
Notable works The Red Tree
The Lost Thing
The Arrival
Cicada
shauntan.net
thebirdking.blogspot.com.au
Shaun Tan (born 1974) is an Australian artist, writer and film maker. He won an Academy Award for The Lost Thing, a 2011 animated film adaptation of a 2000 picture book he wrote and illustrated. Other books he has written and illustrated include The Red Tree and The Arrival.
Tan was born in Fremantle, Western Australia, and grew up in the northern suburbs of Perth, Western Australia. In 2006, his wordless graphic novel The Arrival won the Book of the Year prize as part of the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards.[1] The same book won the Children's Book Council of Australia Picture Book of the Year award in 2007.[2] and the Western Australian Premier's Book Awards Premier's Prize in 2006.[3]
Tan's work has been described as an "Australian vernacular" that is "at once banal and uncanny, familiar and strange, local and universal, reassuring and scary, intimate and remote, guttersnipe and sprezzatura. No rhetoric, no straining for effect. Never other than itself."[4]
For his career contribution to "children's and young adult literature in the broadest sense" Tan won the 2011 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award from the Swedish Arts Council, the biggest prize in children's literature.[5]
Biography
Early life
As a boy, Tan spent time illustrating poems and stories and drawing dinosaurs, robots and spaceships. At school he was known as a talented artist.[6] At the age of eleven, he became a fan of The Twilight Zone television series as well as books that bore similar themes. Tan cites Ray Bradbury as a favorite at this time. These stories led to Tan writing his own short stories. Of his effort at writing as a youth, Tan tells, "I have a small pile of rejection letters as testament to this ambition!"[7] At the age of sixteen, Tan's first illustration appeared in the Australian magazine Aurealis in 1990.[7]
Transition to illustration
Tan almost studied to become a geneticist, and enjoyed chemistry, physics, history and English while in high school as well as art and claimed that he did not really know what he wanted to do.[7] During his university studies, Tan decided to move from academic studies to working as an artist.[8]
Tan continued his education at the University of Western Australia where he studied Fine Arts, English Literature and History. While this was of interest to him, there was little practical work involved.[8] In 1995, he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts.[9]
Work process
Initially, Tan worked in black and white because the final reproductions would be printed that way. Some black and white mediums he used include pens, inks, acrylics, charcoal, scraperboard, photocopies, and linocuts.[7] Tan's current colour works still begin in black and white. He uses a graphite pencil to make sketches on ordinary copy paper. The sketches are then reproduced numerous times with different versions varying with parts added or removed. Sometimes scissors are used for this purpose. The cut and paste collage idea in these early stages is often extend to the finished production with many of his illustrations using such materials as "glass, metal, cuttings from other books and dead insects".[7]
Tan describes himself as a slow worker who revises his work many times along the way. He is interested in loss and alienation, and believes that children in particular react well to issues of natural justice. He feels he is "like a translator" of ideas, and is happy and flattered to see his work adapted and interpreted in film and music (such as by the Australian Chamber Orchestra).[10]
Influences
Tan draws from a large source of inspiration and cites many influences on his work. His comment on the subject is: "I'm pretty omnivorous when it comes to influences, and I like to admit this openly."[7] Some influences are very direct. The Lost Thing is a strong example where Tan makes visual references to famous artworks. Many of his influences are a lot more subtle visually, some of the influences are ideological.
Patronage
The Shaun Tan Award for Young Artists is sponsored by the City of Subiaco and open to all Perth school children between 5 and 17 years. The award is aimed at encouraging creativity in two-dimensional works. It is held annually with award winners announced in May and finalists' works exhibited at the Subiaco Library throughout June.[11]
Awards
1992
L. Ron Hubbard Illustrators of the Future Contest: First Australian to win[7]
1993
Ditmar Award, Artwork, Nominated for Relics[12]
1995
Ditmar Award, Professional Artwork, Winner for Aurealis and Eidolon[7]
1996
Ditmar Award, Artwork, Winner for Eidolon Issue 19 (Cover)[12]
1997
Ditmar Award, Professional Artwork, Nominated for artwork in Eidolon and the cover of The Stray Cat[12]
1998
Crichton Award, Winner for The Viewer
Children's Book Council of Australia, Notable Book for The Viewer
Ditmar Award, Artwork/Artist, Nominated for The Viewer[12]
Western Australian Premier's Book Awards, Children's Book, Shortlisted for The Playground
1999
Aurealis Conveners' Award for Excellence for The Rabbits
Children's Book Council of Australia, Notable Book for The Playground
Children's Book Council of Australia, Picture Book of the Year, Winner for The Rabbits
Ditmar Award, Australian Professional Artwork, Nominated for The Rabbits[12]
Spectrum Gold Award for Book Illustration for The Rabbits
2000
APA Design Award for Memorial
Children's Book Council of Australia, Picture Book of the Year, Honour Book for Memorial
Ditmar Award, Artwork, Winner for The Coode St Review of Science Fiction[12]
Spectrum Gold Award for Book Illustration
Western Australian Premier's Book Awards, Writing for Young Adults award, Shortlisted for Lost Thing[13]
2001
Ditmar Award, Artwork, Winner for The Lost Thing[12]
Children's Book Council of Australia, Picture Book of the Year, Honour Book for The Lost Thing
Western Australian Premier's Book Awards, Children's Books, Shortlisted for Red Tree
World Fantasy Award for Best Artist[14]
2002
Children's Book Council of Australia, Picture Book of the Year, Honour Book for The Red Tree
New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children's Literature Winner for Red Tree
2006
Premier's Prize and Children's Books category winner in the Western Australian Premier's Book Awards for The Arrival
2007
Ditmar Award, Artwork, Nominated for The Arrival[12]
Children's Book Council of Australia, Picture Book of the Year, Honour Book for The Lost Thing
World Fantasy Award for Best Artist[15]
New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, Community Relations Commission Award for The Arrival
Children's Book Council of Australia, Picture Book of the Year for "The Arrival".
2008
Angoulême International Comics Festival Prize for Best Comic Book for Là où vont nos pères, the French edition of The Arrival[16]
Hugo Award, Nominated for Best Related Book for The Arrival[17]
Hugo Award, Nominated for Best Professional Artist (also in 2009 and 2010)
Western Australian Premier's Book Awards Young Adult category winner for Tales from Outer Suburbia
Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, Special Citation for The Arrival[18]
2009
Ditmar Award, Artwork, Winner for Tales from Outer Suburbia[12]
Children's Book Council of Australia, Picture Book of the Year, Honour Book for The Lost Thing
World Fantasy Award for Best Artist[14]
2010
Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature, winner of the Children's Literature Award category and the South Australian Premier's Award for Tales from Outer Suburbia
Dromkeen Medal
Hugo Award, Best Professional Artist
2011
Academy Award, Won Best Short Film (Animated) for The Lost Thing
Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award[5]
Ditmar Award, Artwork, Winner for The Lost Thing[12]
Ditmar Award, Artwork, Nominated for Australis Imaginarium[12]
Hugo Award, Best Professional Artist[19]
Peter Pan Prize for the Swedish translation of The Arrival[20]
2014
Locus Award, Artist[12]
Ditmar Award, Artwork, Winner for Rules of Summer[12]
Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, Picture Book Honor for Rules of Summer[18]
2019
World Fantasy Award for Best Artist, Finalist[21]:Children's Book Council of Australia, Picture Book of the Year, Winner for Cicada[22]
2020
Kate Greenaway Medal, Winner for Tales from the Inner City[23]
Adaptations
The Red Tree, a play based on Tan's book of the same name, was commissioned by the Queensland Performing Arts Centre.[24]
The Red Tree, a music performance created by new composer Michael Yezerski with Richard Tognetti; performed by the Australian Chamber Orchestra with the youth choir Gondwana Voices, and accompanied by images from the book.[25]
The Arrival. Images from this book were projected during a performance by the Australian Chamber Orchestra of conductor Richard Tognetti's arrangement of Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 15[25]
The Lost Thing has been adapted as an Oscar-winning animated short film.[26]
The Lost Thing inspired an album by Sydney band Lo-Tel, complete with artwork from the book.
The Lost Thing has also been adapted as a play by the Jigsaw Theatre Company,[27] a youth theatre company in Canberra. This was the main event for the National Gallery of Australia's Children Festival (Canberra) and at the Chookahs! Kids Festival (Melbourne) in 2006.
The Lost Thing was the theme for the 2006 Chookahs! Kids Festival at The Arts Centre[28] in Melbourne, with many different activities based on concepts from the book.
The Arrival was adapted for the stage by Red Leap Theatre.[29]
The Arrival was again projected on a screen to an orchestral score, performed by Orkestra of the Underground with 18 pieces created by musician and composer Ben Walsh. This was performed in the Opera House in Sydney, The Melbourne Recital Centre and Her Majesty's Theatre in Adelaide.[30]
The Rabbits was the basis for an opera of the same title by Kate Miller-Heidke which was premiered at the 2015 Perth International Arts Festival.
Works
Books
As illustrator
The Pipe, by James Moloney (1996)
The Stray Cat, by Steven Paulsen (1996)
The Doll, by Janine Burke (1997)
The Half Dead, by Garry Disher (1997)
The Viewer, written by Gary Crew (1997)
The Rabbits, written by John Marsden (1998)
The Hicksville Horror, by Nette Hilton (1999)
The Puppet, by Ian Bone (1999)
Memorial, written by Gary Crew (1999)
Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link (2008)
As author and illustrator
The Playground (1997)
The Lost Thing (2000)
The Red Tree (2001)
The Arrival (2006)
Tales from Outer Suburbia (2008)
The Bird King and other sketches (2011)
The Oopsatoreum: inventions of Henry A. Mintox, with the Powerhouse Museum (2012)
Rules of Summer (2013)
The Singing Bones (2016)
Cicada (2018)
Tales from the Inner City (2018)
Dog (2020)[31]
Eric (2020)
Creature (2022)
Installations
Mural in the Children's Section of the Subiaco Public Library (Perth, Western Australia).[32]
Shaun Tan's curious creatures are just looking for companionship
November 3, 20225:01 AM ET
Heard on All Things Considered
Elizabeth Blair 2018 square
Elizabeth Blair
3-Minute Listen
Download
Transcript
Creature: Paintings, Drawings, and Reflections is a new collection of images from artist and writer Shaun Tan's best-known works as well as more than 100 illustrations that have never been seen before. The book also includes essays by the artist.
Shaun Tan/Levine Querido
Artist and author Shaun Tan creates semi-mechanical and animalesque beings that seem born of both the natural world and industrious humans. Whimsical, cerebral, socially aware, grotesque and cuddly, Tan's artistic universe runs the emotional gamut.
Creature: Paintings, Drawings, and Reflections is a comprehensive collection of Tan's artwork from the last 25 years as well as essays by Tan about his creative practice and lifelong fascination with creatures.
"As an artist, I'm interested in what you do when you encounter something that's really, really strange and unfamiliar," he tells NPR, "whether it's with fear or evasion or curiosity and maybe even love is really quite telling."
Over the course of 25 years, Tan has received numerous honors including an Academy Award for the short film The Lost Thing, based on his book of the same name, a Best Books for Young Adults from the American Library Association for his 2008 graphic novel The Arrival and two Hugo Awards for Best Professional Artist. Tan's admirers include fellow artist/illustrators Art Spiegelman, Neil Gaiman and Marjane Satrapi.
Sponsor Message
Shaun Tan's wordless, graphic novel The Arrival traces the immigrant experience, including encounters with other-worldly creatures.
Shaun Tan/Levine Querido
They start out as doodles
Tan talks about his creations as if they have minds of their own. He says he's constantly drawing in his sketchbooks, "It's often just random words and pictures and very playful, very nonsensical." But occasionally those "doodles," as he calls them, become something more.
In the case of The Lost Thing, he says it began with "just a little person on a beach having what looked like a philosophical conversation with a large, metal, crab like creature," remembers Tan, "the creature looked very frightening and strange and it was dwarfing this little person, but the person was not afraid."
"I thought, ok, what would happen if you saw something very large and scary on the beach...and instead of avoiding it or running away, you just went up and started talking to it," Shaun Tan on The Lost Thing.
Shaun Tan/Levine Querido
The human searches all over to find out where the thing belongs. Nobody else in the town, including the human's parents, seem to care. The Lost Thing is a kind of fable about apathy and belonging.
The need to belong can be overrated
Tan says the notion of belonging comes up "every time" he writes a story or paints a picture. "There's this sense that belonging can become a bit of a crisis. I mean, we don't really interrogate the concept that much. We consider it a virtue of some kind. And we're all searching for it," he says, "but we're not often questioning what it is exactly or whether it's always such a good thing."
"I think there's something really special about a human ability to love non-human things and quite deeply," artist and writer Shaun Tan tells NPR.
Levine Querido
In The Lost Thing, the human helps the giant, metal crab-like creature find a place where it wants to stay, a kind of home filled with other lost things. The narrator says, "I can't say that the thing actually belonged in the place where it ended up. In fact, none of the things there really belonged. They all seemed happy enough though, so maybe that didn't matter."
Tan wrote The Lost Thing early in his career when he doubted whether his artwork had purpose. "It kind of tapped into something I was feeling at the time in my mid-20s of wanting to be creative but not quite sure where I belonged and what the meaning of my work was," he tells NPR, "And the story ended up being about all those things, about what do you do with meaningless work, and is that OK? And I've come to realize it is OK."
Sponsor Message
Tan grew up in the outer suburbs of Perth in western Australia, "which at the time was a bit of a castaway place on the coast. Very windy, sandy, sunny." He says a combination of "boredom" and "playing in nature" inspired his art-making and came "to shape who I am and the way I think about things."
Tan's fascination with birds began when he was around 11 years old. Walking through a local park, a small wattlebird fell from a tree right in front of him. In Creature he writes, "a deeper empathy snapped to attention, a deeper reality. A compassion that bypassed all other thinking with a sense of kinship and purpose." Tan writes that he brought the bird home and he and his family nursed it back to health.
In his new book Creature, Tan devotes one of his essays to his fascination with birds. For this painting, titled Empire, he writes that he "imagines a wattlebird as a kind of ancestral spirit."
Shaun Tan/Levine Querido
Drawing for companionship
"I think there's something really special about a human ability to love non-human things and quite deeply," Tan tells NPR.
He says he's always been interested in a creature "as a companion, not as an adversary or antagonist or a threat or something even scary and mysterious. But as the person sitting next to you."
In his illustration titled "I Know," Tan imagines a faucet creature hugging a little girl. Tan says it's saying, "I don't have a solution for you. I may not be able to help you, but I know what you're feeling. It seems a little more poignant that it's coming from an almost inanimate object."
In Shaun Tan's world, even a faucet can be turned into a creature companion. "It's such an emotional object for me," he says, "the fact that water flows out of it, you know, whether that's sort of tears or a source of nourishment."
Shaun Tan/Levine Querido
Creature is partly the result of Tan being "trapped at home" during the pandemic, without access to his studio. He took the opportunity to organize hundreds of his sketches. As he looked through them, he says, he discovered "some connective tissue between all these random bones and joints and particularly this idea of the creatures." He hopes readers, particularly kids, will look through the collection and realize, "here's an adult that never stopped drawing funny creatures and actually figured out something serious to say about them."
Shaun Tan grew up in Perth and works as an artist, writer and film-maker in Melbourne. He is best known for illustrated books that deal with social and historical subjects through dream-like imagery, widely translated throughout the world and enjoyed by readers of all ages. Shaun is the recipient of an Academy Award for the short animated film The Lost Thing, the prestigious Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in Sweden and the Kate Greenaway Medal in the UK.
Do you sell your artwork, or prints?
Many of the images on this site are available as limited edition prints. Generally I don’t sell original artworks from my books, but I do exhibit other illustrative works, paintings and preliminary studies through the following principal galleries, with online catalogues:
Beinart Gallery in Melbourne (key representation for original paintings and drawings)
Books Illustrated in Melbourne, specialists in children’s book illustration
You can also find limited edition prints at these places:
Diabolik Books & Records, Perth
Found at Fremantle Arts Centre, Perth
The Literature Centre, Perth, only occasionally open to the public, check site for details. All profits from print sales at TLC support their literacy education programs.
Any forthcoming exhibitions will be listed via Instagram @shauncytan
Do you accept commissions?
No, unfortunately I don't accept commissions due to the demands of other studio work. This also means that I do not consider unsolicited manuscripts, and am unable to collaborate with other writers on picture books or graphic novels. While I do my best to deal with all inquiries, please note that I don't read manuscripts or respond to submissions, so please don't interpret my silence as a bad review! It isn’t at all.
Should you still wish to get in touch, you can contact my agent, Sophie Byrne at this address: sophie@passion-pictures.com.au
Due to limited studio hours, I'm also unable to offer folio assessment, act as a mentor for students or provide other specific advice, much as I would like to. However, I’d still like to help by addressing some common questions below for new illustrators, some tips about publishing and a few comments on writing picture books. Also check out the Comments page of this site, as you may find some relevant essays posted there (often transcripts of talks presented to students or others interested in illustrated books).
Where can I find your books?
My books can be found in most good bookstores and online booksellers, although availability does vary, especially from country to country (and also where they are shelved; often as children's books, sometimes as graphic novels, general fiction and art/design.) Where possible I encourage you to support local independent booksellers. Neither myself or my agent are able to supply books or advise on their particular availability, these queries are best directed at respective publishers in different countries. Please go to the bottom of this page to see a list of publishers and their contacts.
Do you do school visits and talks?
Much as I would like to visit many different schools to talk about books and illustration, I am currently unavailable for school visits due to other work commitments.
Permission to reproduce images or text
Yes, it is possible to reproduce single images or excerpts from my work as long as it is for both a non-commercial, non-profit and educational or academic purpose, or part of a critical review, as the source is clearly acknowledged (the publisher). In all other cases involving a commercial interest, a licensing fee may be payable to respective publishers, and these are the people to contact rather than myself: see below for a list of main publishers. For foreign language titles, please contact respective publishers.
In any case, you should inform a publisher of any image use, especially if you are unsure.
For books first published by Lothian Books/Hachette Australia:
General subsidiary rights enquiries should be sent to rights@hachette.com.au Information about permissions can be found at http://www.hachettechildrens.com.au/permissions Books published first by Lothian Books/Hachette Australia are Cicada, The Arrival, Sketches from a Nameless Land, Rules of Summer, The Lost Thing, The Red Tree, The Rabbits, The Viewer and Memorial.
For Tales from Outer Suburbia, The Singing Bones, Tales from the Inner City, Eric and Dog, contact Allen & Unwin Australia, info@allenandunwin.com
www.allenandunwin.com
Outside of Australia, you will need to contact the respective publisher in your territory first.
Images and text on this website, including comments and essays, may be used without seeking permission, so long as it is for an educational or non-commercial purpose only, and the source is properly acknowledged.
As for personal tattoos - and I receive a surprising number of requests! - no permission is necessary, given this is a non-commerical, private use. You are welcome to adopt and modify any images you like, so long as they are in keeping the the original spirit (ie. nothing obscene or political of course, but hey, it’s your body!)
Other Queries and Publisher Contacts
If you have any questions or comments concerning the availability of books, these are best sent to the appropriate publisher (see below). If you have a question about image rights, or any other professional matters, this is also best addressed to the appropriate publisher.
Please note that while I do my best to answer all requests I'm unable to respond to individual inquiries. If you are conducting research as a student or academic, please note that I can't participate interviews as much as I'd like to, but have made as many resources available on my site to assist you – in fact, that’s really why I have this website – and these are free for you to use for those purposes without permission.
For other enquiries about film, theatre, festivals, exhibitions or other professional issues, please contact my agent Sophie Byrne: sophie@passion-pictures.com.au
Key International Publishers (in some cases, more than one publisher in each territory depending on title)
Australian & New Zealand: Hachette Australia, Allen & Unwin, Windy Hollow Books (The Bird King)
United States: Scholastic Inc.
United Kingdom: Hachette Children's Books, Walker Books, Templar
China: Beijing Poplar
Taiwan: Grimm Press, Taipei
Canada: Tundra / Penguin Random House, Scholastic Inc
France: Gallimard Jeunesse, Dargaud
Germany: Aladin / Thienemann-Esslinger Verlag
Sweden: Lilla Piratförlaget (Little Pirate)
Spain (and most Spanish Language): BARBARA FIORE EDITORA
Italy: Tunue, Rizzoli
Denmark: ABC Forlag
Norway: Cappelen Damm, Egmont Serieforlaget AS
Netherlands: Quierido Children's Books
Japan: Kawade, Imajinsha (The Red Tree)
Poland: Kultura
Czech Republic: Labyrint, Albatros
Turkey: Tudem
Korea: Publit, Prooni
QUESTIONS ABOUT WRITING AND PAINTING
Following are some responses to questions that I am often asked, by readers, students and researchers of children’s literature, mostly about influences and working practice. Other comments on writing and illustration can be found in the ‘Notes’ page of this site.
What books influenced you the most as a child?
This is difficult to answer because the things that most influence my work are probably also the ones I most take for granted. Something as simple as the availability of paint and pencils may be more important than any books (my Dad was an architect and my Mum liked to paint giant Disney pictures on our bedroom walls). Generally I had a very happy childhood filled with many pictures and stories.
My mum read to my brother and I quite a bit when we were small, and it was pretty broad ranging. My family are not particularly literary, so we were reading whatever was at hand in terms of stories without too much discrimination or guidance (as was the case with TV and movies). One story Mum read which really sticks in my memory is Animal Farm, by George Orwell, which she thought was a children's book. None of us recognised the satire about Soviet politics, but we all thought it was a great story, and the fact that it did not have a happy ending was something I found surprising, disturbing and, I recall, quite satisfying! I still think a lot about Animal Farm as a reference point for both my writing and illustration now – it’s a book that’s simple, absurd and truthful. It also achieves a universality outside of any specific satirical references, a comment on human nature everywhere; as shown by the fact I could enjoy it as a child. One of my first picture books, The Rabbits, has a slight Orwellian feel about it in retrospect, probably a result of that very early influence.
In terms of illustrated books, there was a book of horror poems called The Headless Horseman Rides Tonight (1976), written by Jack Prelutsky and illustrated in amusingly creepy pen and ink drawings by Arnold Lobel. I can still recall the images quite vividly, and borrowed that book many times from my local library. Anything about monsters, outer space or robots was also on the list. The first book I ever bought, with my entire life savings at the age of seven, was an illustrated book of dinosaurs, which I looked through all the time, reproduced drawings from and dutifully memorised all the dinosaur names. I probably learnt as much about drawing from that book and anything else, tracing lines directly onto baking paper with a pencil.
There was also Chris Van Allsburg's The Mysteries of Harris Burdick (1984) which I still admire as an adult as an ideal picture book experiment - a whole series of fragmentary sentences and singular strange drawings that are never fully explained. I also liked Fungus the Bogeyman by Raymond Briggs, but only discovered a lot of his other books (and been quite influenced by them) as an adult. There are a number of Quentin Blake images that stick in my head too - particularly one about a jam-powered frog - and I was a great fan of anything by Roald Dahl.
Later (about 10-12) I remember being impressed by The Hobbit, and a trilogy of books by John Christopher about a future world invaded centuries ago by giant, sentinel robots that everyone just accepts as normal: The White Mountains, The City of Gold and Lead, The Pool of Fire. As a teenager I was mostly influenced by the short stories of Ray Bradbury, which were like strange dreams or adult fairy-tales, and probably cemented my interest in science-fiction / fantasy as a way of exploring social and political ideas. My particular favourites were The Silver Locusts and The Illustrated Man - in many ways my own books Tales from Outer Suburbia and Tales from the Inner City are nods towards these anthologies.
Visually, I was probably more influenced by movies and TV than painting as a child; the first Star Wars films for their designs much more than the story, and certain fantasy films like The Dark Crystal (which I was obsessed with when I was about 10). I also watched a lot of Dr Who, Star Trek and such shows, but never became a big follower of these. I was much more interested in The Twilight Zone, again because it was 'real world' fantasy with a short fable-like structure I think. One reason I do picture books today is that I remain interested mostly in very short philosophical stories rather than long-form narratives, and picture books are perfect for this.
So I think all those things have influenced me, plus a great deal more. Some of it is conscious, but most probably isn't - you just get a sense that a painting or story works because it feels right, and this feeling is informed by a mixture of both a first-hand experience of life, and the models of storytelling and imagination provided by books, TV, movies and so on; culture, art, language. I don’t discriminate much between ‘high art’ and ‘popular culture’ – it’s just whatever happens to be interesting, intelligent, honest and memorable.
How did you become an artist?
I was always interested in drawing as a child, which I think is true of virtually all children, only I never really stopped doing it! The impulse to write stories and create images is essentially the same as an adult, only you bring a lot more experience to the task, and become more critical about the process.
My parents were always keen to encourage whatever interests my brother and I had as kids. So, just as my brother was obsessed with collecting rocks from about the age of 6 (and now works as a geologist), I always wanted to be an artist. I also enjoyed writing poems and stories, sometimes illustrating them, as I grew up, as well as making various paintings and sculptures.
I wasn’t sure for a long time that you could actually make a living as an artist, and was also interested in other things, such as history and science, by the time I was in high school. I was seriously considering a career in biotechnology by the time I graduated, but simultaneously very involved with painting and writing (my main hobby as a teenager was writing science fiction stories, and painting natural landscapes).
I ended up graduating from the University of Western Australia with a degree in Fine Arts and English Literature, having decided these were the subjects I was most attracted to. My studies had been pretty academic however, being art and literary theory / criticism rather than practice, and I was very keen at this stage to see if I could make a living as a freelance artist. I had actually been illustrating things while a student as way of making money – drawing for magazines, newspapers, book covers, music posters, flyers and newsletters, mostly around campus, plus selling the odd painting. I pretty much learned all my current illustration techniques through doing these small jobs.
I had also become quite involved with a couple of small press science fiction magazines, Aurealis and Eidolon, which began in high school when I posted off a picture of a robot kangaroo to one of these. To my surprise they published it (though never any of my writing!). Around the same time I also won an in award in the US for science fiction illustration (again, after submitting work) which made be think further that this might be a possible career path.
I became involved as an artist and editor with the Perth-based Eidolon for ten years while a student, which was essentially unpaid (well, $20 for every illustration) but rewarding because I met plenty of other like-minded writers and artists, and really learnt different ways of illustrating by working with a challenging variety of texts. My drawing and conceptual skills developed mostly as a result of working for this and other magazines – producing about 200 story illustrations in all, often quite experimental. In hindsight, I can’t think where I might have found a broader range of subjects to test my skills than in the area of speculative fiction magazines – stories about time, space, death, history, philosophy, art, sexuality, mathematics, ethics, horror and much more – usually set in some other world (past, future or inter-planetary) than our own.
On leaving university, I became increasingly involved in children's and young adult literature, including picture books, largely because some of the writers involved with science fiction were also being published in the this area as well. I was also frequently submitting material to different publishers, expressing an interest every possible form of illustrative work – I really needed to make money! I knew very little about picture books when first asked to illustrate one, and tended to share many people's prejudice that they were exclusively the domain of young children, not an art form that lends itself to much artistic or intellectual sophistication.
Working with Gary Crew on my first few books – some small horror stories in a series called After Dark and an elaborate science-fiction picture book The Viewer – led me to think about picture books more deeply. Gary is a very versatile creator and academic when it comes to visual narrative, and a great advocate of the idea that pictures books are ideal for older readers, not just children.
It’s an interest that I’ve inherited, and have since worked on a variety of illustrated texts which are to varying degrees experimental. These are not great money-spinners, however, and I have also worked regularly on other commissioned projects, particularly cover artwork for novels, as a way of generating income. More recently, I have begun working in other areas in addition to book illustration, including theatre and animated film, as well as spending a fair amount of time writing and painting just for my own interest.
It is probably fair to say that for a majority of artists, it would be difficult to come up with a single definitive job description, as there are many unexpected opportunities when it comes to creative work. I am finding that I’m constantly learning new skills, new ways of thinking and new techniques to solve about different artistic problems, and this is what keeps the work challenging and interesting.
How would you define illustration?
The word 'illustration' is one I don’t actually like a lot; it suggests something derivative, a visual elaboration of an idea governed by text. In ‘fine arts’ discourse you often find the term used in a derogatory sense, almost in opposition to serious drawing or painting; something is ‘mere illustration’. That is, somewhat slavish or incapable of self-contained meaning; it can only be descriptive.
Yet in working in this area I find that the most interesting relationships between words and pictures are not actually very descriptive at all, but rather about the interesting relationship that can exist between two independent means of expression. In all of my recent work, the text and illustrations could operate as narratives in isolation, but happen to react in similar ways, opening new meanings from each other's context.
I have to say that illustrations are for me the main 'texts' in my books, and although writing is often the starting point, it rather acts as a kind of scaffolding or binding that stitches everything together. More recently I have been thinking a lot about visual narrative where there is no accompanying text. I’m intrigued by the ability of the reader to superimpose their own thoughts and feelings onto visual experience, without the possible distraction of words.
How do you create a picture book?
Most of the few picture books I have done have each taken about a year to complete (although The Arrival took 4-5 years). Much of that time isn't necessarily productive in any visible way - true of many creative projects I think. It involves a lot of thinking while doing other stuff (eg. washing dishes) and playing with many ideas that may or may not work, making loads of scribbly notes and doodles in sketchbooks.
With a blank piece of paper in front of me, my imagination is not especially fired up. I could start drawing, but everything would end up looking the same - and most likely stuff I’ve done before. So I actively look to absorb foreign ideas and influences, which is one key lesson learned from years of illustrating different SF stories. Good ideas don’t just turn up, you have to go looking for them.
Research - reading, looking at pictures, playing with different media - provides freedom from the creative paralysis that comes with infinite possibility. I need specific points of reference to develop ideas, and also a kind of resistance to my own stylistic ‘default settings’ so that I think outside the usual circles, and actually learn something new.
Painting and drawing for me is not about creation but about transformation. It's not so much about expressing preconceived themes or a mastered delivery of statements but rather a process of slightly absent-minded discovery, of seeing where certain lines of thinking take you if you keep following them. I know I'm on the right track when there is a sense of unfamiliarity about what I'm doing, that I'm actually being surprised by the way mixed drawings and words make their own novel sense, and I can coax them into surrendering whatever meaning is there through repeated drawings.
Do you start with words or pictures?
This varies a lot, as there is really no ‘right way’ of coming up with a working story or set of images. Generally speaking, I tend to start with one or two images that may either be sketches, or vague mental pictures, but will have little to no idea what they mean - a fish floating down a street, a boy feeding a monster in a shed, a water buffalo pointing at something. Then I will play with words a lot to try and ‘say’ something about what is going on, while at the same time making it even more of a mystery.
I will write many disconnected sentences and phrases, and mix these with small thumbnail drawings, over many pages of a sketchbook - aware that I will throw away or change almost everything later on. Often I end up writing and drawing a lot of material, and then strip it back to its essential images and words; build on those, and again strip it back - so it is kind of like modeling and carving using ideas.
After a while I can decided if what I’ve been doing is worth pursuing as a book - is it interesting on both a conceptual and emotional level? Is it original, and does it seem to say something that is true to real life? In many cases, the answer is ‘no’ and it ends there; though I’ve found that often parts of abandoned projects make their way into other ones.
If the story and concept seem strong (as if a publisher likes it), I will produce a dummy, a sketchy version of the book with all its pages, at roughly the printed size. It’s full of photocopied drawings and bits of paper carrying text stuck down with removable tape, so I can keep going back and exchange parts, move them around, elaborate or reduce. I’m constantly reading through to check for fluency and contrasts, and book design (where the text and pictures go). It’s also a handy thing to copy and send to my editor for comment, as well as the ‘instruction manual’ for the finished artwork and story that I refer to throughout the long process of production, which can extend, on and off, over years. Over such a period, the dummy serves to remind you of the look and feel of the project.
How do you make a finished illustration?
I take my rough drawings up to the point where I have a fairly clean line drawing in layout paper that I can trace onto a support (usually stretched medium weight watercolour paper, very smooth, primed with acrylic paint) using graphite or white transfer paper. Most of my illustrations are not huge because they need to fit on a scanner for reproduction, which demands they be around A2 - A1 in size. I find it is better to work closer to the scale that the reader will see them, so that details don’t end up being too small (most artwork reproduced is reduced from a larger image).
I usually paint from dark to light, so I trace white lines onto a dark grey or brown background. I also do a small, very quick colour sketch of the image using acrylic paint and pastel crayon over a photocopy of a preliminary drawing, sometimes a couple of these using different colour schemes. I paint quite quickly in thin acrylic to start off with, and continue the editorial process of the sketches where I’m still changing my mind (hence the use of opaque media, where ‘mistakes’ can be covered). I then paint over these layers in oil paint, which offers slightly richer colour, and slower drying time which I prefer, being a slow painter.
I also work in other media, and in the past have used scratchboard, pastel crayons, coloured pencils, gouache, watercolour, pen and ink, linocuts and assemblages (using found objects); apply these to paper, canvas and plywood board. I also use collage frequently, because it allows unexpected elements to be introduced into a painting and creates an interesting texture, both of physical surface and ideas. Recently I’ve been experimenting with combining traditional media with new digital ones. Each medium works well for conveying certain ideas and effects, and this is what governs my choice, along with various experiments that often include mixing media.
Do you have much involvement with book design?
I try to get as much input over the design of a book as possible, to the point of hand-lettering in books such as The Red Tree and The Lost Thing. I see the typography and layout as an integral part of the illustration in many cases, and as open to possibility as the composition and style of painting itself; it can move, curve, be broken into bits, turn up-side-down, have words cut out from somewhere else. This can really change the meaning of a word or picture significantly, in provoking certain thoughts.
As well as being sympathetic, text and image must never compete because they are quite different things, so I tend to put less visuals with a lot of text, and where the illustration carries more meaning, I’ll reduce the text accordingly, occasionally removing it altogether.
The cover illustration is always the last thing I do, and I see it as the least important in terms of the story, though obviously significant in other ways. It’s just there to get the reader interested in what the book is about, especially by looking different or unusual. It needs to represent the whole story to some extent, as it is the image most readers will be exposed to as it appears on shelves, in any newspaper or magazine reviews, even in reader’s memory. People do judge a book by its cover!
Which artists’ work most influences your own?
I'm pretty omnivorous when it comes to influences, and I like to admit this openly. Readers of The Lost Thing often notice my parodies of famous paintings by artists like Edward Hopper and Jeffrey Smart, or slight references to the medieval artist Hieronymus Bosch and Spanish Surrealists. I could list hundreds of illustrators, writers, cartoonists, photographers, filmmakers, and artists (both historical and contemporary) who influence me by virtue of the fact that I'm interested in their work, but it changes from time to time. I would also have to include equally important, though seemingly banal influences like suburban streets, cloud formations, conversations, the way paint runs down a canvas, or colors go together, or objects arranged on a table or landscape - basically a kind of more abstract realm of inspiration that is rooted in everyday encounters and accidents of perception. And there's always something to discover, usually in the same old stuff you've been looking at every day - there’s no shortage of material. You just have to apply your imagination and look at it all from a new angle.
What advice would you give to an aspiring illustrator?
Well, firstly that all advice ought to be measured against personal experience and circumstance, so not always right or useful. That said, there are a several key things I've learnt during my working life that might be broadly applied to most creative pursuits.
Naturally, you need to enjoy what you do, to the extent that it is a pleasure to go beyond the call of duty, and to always try and create something that is more than sufficient. Every piece of work should involve some element of personal innovation or challenge.
It's also important to be reliable, and easy to work with, as with any other job – in short, professional. This is the main reason clients will continue to give you work. Almost all of my work has come to me through the recommendations of others, and many things I worked on for little payment as a student proved to be a worthwhile, both as practise and exposure.
Communication is very important, even though so much time is spent working alone. You need to be able to talk about everything you create in a clear and explanatory way to help others understand your ideas, especially when they are not immediately visible. You need to be open to discussion and compromise, while at the same time maintaining your own artistic integrity - these are not necessarily incompatible.
Technical competence as an artist is of course essential, but it is merely a tool for the realization of ideas; without a strong imagination, the display of skill is just that – and ‘style’ is interesting, but only if backed up by content. It helps to remain interested in all forms of art, and have a good grasp of art history as well as some knowledge of art theory. This very often becomes the unseen backbone of artistic thinking. Developing a visual sensibility and vocabulary, rather than just technical skills, means that you can be versatile enough to deal with many different projects, and find original solutions.
As long as you are doing something, even if it isn't successful, you are not wasting your time. The greatest achievement of so much creative work is simply finding time and dedication to do it, especially when it seems difficult and less than enjoyable (almost every project seems to involve some kind of confidence-wounding ‘crisis’). Good ideas and talent aren't worth much if they aren't put through the wringer of actual hard work.
Pay attention to criticism, and don't pay attention to criticism! At the end of the day, you are the ultimate judge of your own work, so learn to be critical in an affirmative rather than negative way. All creators - if they are any good - suffer from periods of disappointment, even depression with their own achievements (or lack thereof), that's perfectly normal! Just keep going, if you want to cross that threshold. You also never find out if you've really failed until you actually finish a piece of work.
Finally, for anyone interested in being an artist, illustrator, designer - learn to draw well! It's a valuable foundation, something you'll always use. Drawing is one way of learning to see well, something that takes several thousand hours of practice (and even then, never entirely mastered!). If I only had one piece of advice to a young artist (of any age) it would be that: draw, draw, draw!
Tips on Getting Published
Being an competent artist is one thing, getting published represents a very different set of problems. The most important advice I can offer is this: consider the publisher. What can you offer them with your work? Research the area you are interested in, and know what a prospective editor might be looking for, what other work is out there. A picture book text might be as brilliant as it's potential illustrator, but if it does not suit the list that a publisher is pursuing, both are quite likely be rejected. Unfortunately, publishers do not exist to supply a canvas for free artistic self-expression – I wish! – they are of course primarily a commercial business.
Be aware that there is a 'culture' of illustrated books that you need to be familiar with (which can vary from country to country). One good way of finding out about this is to study recent books which have won major awards. Recognise trends, but don't bend backwards to imitate them. Look for the point of intersection between your creative interests, and the kinds of books that are being successfully published.
As a contemporary illustrator, much can be accomplished by having a very good website, and a well-presented folio. I would keep both of these quite simple, showing only your best work; in a folio, only about twelve pieces - be very selective. These should represent technical skill and diversity, colour and monochrome; and especially anything featuring human figures, something editors usually look for.
Where appropriate, it is good to request a face-to-face meeting with a relevant editor or art director. I've personally found this very useful, being able to understand each others interests, and know each other as people rather than (less memorable) email addresses.
For more practical advice for beginner writers and illustrators (in Australia at least), I would recommend the links page of the Children's Book Council of Australia (CBCA) (www.cbc.org.au/links.htm) which has plenty of information for writers and illustrators. The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) (www.scbwi.org) is based in the US mostly, but has and Australian Chapter (www.scbwi.ampl.com.au). A great resource for Australian artists and illustrators presenting a small folio of work online is The Style File (www.thestylefile.com) which makes the work of many artists accessible to publishers and any other potential clients.
I would also recommend the ASA Comics and Graphic Novels portfolio. Comics Biz, the ezine of the Comics/Graphic Novels Portfolio comes out on the last Thursday of the month and can be downloaded from this site.
Picture Book Texts
Producing a good picture book text, with or without illustrations (or words for that matter) - for adults or children - is far more difficult than it often looks. Some tips I suggest for any new picture book writers and illustrators:
- The strength of a good picture book text often lies in its brevity, and a very economic use of language, what the writer Margaret Wild calls 'essential storytelling'. Many of the manuscripts I've seen are unpublishable simply because that are way too long. Whittle everything down to bare bones, and see what you can do without.
- Show, don't tell, or better yet, give room for the illustrations to show. For instance, you do not need to describe an emotional state in words if you can express it visually through a situation, a facial expression, gesture, or some other illustrative device.
- As a writer, do not necessarily anticipate what an illustrator is going to draw or paint. A good picture book is a collaboration between two 'writers', one using words, one using pictures. It's more about creating free space for a visual 'director' within a good 'script'. Also be mindful that a text can change as words and pictures co-evolve.
- Accordingly, a good picture book has two texts that work together symbiotically, they can reveal different sides to the same story, or different stories altogether, involving disparity, irony and even contradiction. The best illustrations do not simply illustrate.
- It can be useful to think about book format, page layout and design, as this can be an important element in illustrated books, more so than in other literary forms.
- All other rules of good fiction writing apply, so to be a good picture book writer, you need to be a good writer, ideally with interest and practise in all forms of writing, including longer prose and poetry.
Be aware that publishers will generally accept a picture book based on the text alone, without illustrations, and they usually prefer to direct and commission an illustrator themselves. So it is not necessary for a writer to work with an illustrator before approaching a publisher (although that can happen, it's unusual) - though speculative suggestions fine.
For writer-illustrators, the text and one or two finished 'example' illustrations represents a suitable submission. Possibly a preliminary mock-up of the book, rough layout sketches. If it's a longer work, such as an illustrated novel, you should probably submit a first chapter. In any case, it's best to check with a publisher first if they (a) accept unsolicited submissions and (b) have submission guidelines.
Always include a cover letter, with a brief introduction of yourself and your work (especially if it is wordless) - the key word here is brief. Editors are busy folk and not partial to long cover letters or emails.
Finally, rejection is normal! (I've lost count of mine) It means that the interests of a particular publisher do not line up with yours, so it's not a clear assessment of quality. Publishers are not a manscript assessment service, although such things do exist and can be worth investigating.
For more general tips on being a professional illustrator (or writer), see my article "Advice For a New Illustrator" on my page of Comments and Essays.
TAN, Shaun. Creature: Paintings, Drawings, and Reflections. 224p. Levine Querido. Nov. 2022. Tr $35. ISBN 9781646142002.
Gr 7 Up--This book is a collection of Tan's artwork, both new and previously published pieces, along with essays about his creative process. Tan's artwork is surreal, haunting, and thought-provoking, whether the images are sketched in pencil or crayon or painted in full vibrant colors. This book is geared towards older readers who want to take a deeper dive into Tan's work, and they will be intrigued by his discussions of his favorite types of creatures, as well as the influence on his work, everything from films to mythology to his Australian roots. While this collection is being marketed for teens and adults, and the essays are clearly meant for an older audience, kids who love his artwork will also be captivated by the astonishing images. VERDICT For Tan fans of all ages, as well as teens and adults who are looking for ideas on how to find inspiration and channel their own creativity.--Andrea Lipinski
KEY: * Excellent in relation to other titles on the same subject or in the same genre | Tr Hardcover trade binding | lib. ed. Publisher's library binding | Board Board book | pap. Paperback | e eBook original | BL Bilingual | POP Popular Picks | SP Spanish
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2022 A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Lipinski, Andrea. "TAN, Shaun. Creature: Paintings, Drawings, and Reflections." School Library Journal, vol. 68, no. 12, Dec. 2022, p. 103. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A729548089/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=5f25c86a. Accessed 20 May 2023.
Creature: Paintings, Drawings, and Reflections. By Shaun Tan. Illus. by the author. Oct. 2022.224p. Levine Querido, $35 (9781646142002). Gr. 10-12.740.
Here is a figure, draped in an endearingly shabby overcoat covered with buttons, whose head is a spinning wheel spooled with thread. This not atypical creation by multiple-award-winning Australian illustrator Tan exemplifies the dichotomies he works with: the disconcertingly outlandish as affectionately familiar, the humanization of technology, the domestic neighboring the industrial. This gorgeously designed coffee-table survey of his picture book, comics, exhibition, and sketchbook work exposes readers to a 26-year panoply of off-kilter conceptions, in all their disquieting delight. Untethered from their narratives, the images are left "wonderfully unclear," setting readers free to roam and invent, to fill in the generous blanks. Brief accompanying essays entitled "Lost Things," "Companions," "Myth & Metaphor," and "Birds" do, however, offer general thoughts on artistic motivations, processes, and a central theme, which Tan himself calls out as "creatures ... the unresolved cast of our dreams." The theme could as well be stated (as Tan also suggests) as an ongoing effort to build empathy for the outsider. Background and inspirations for each individual image are offered as addenda for those craving such things. Even without them, this wondrous collection is ideal for burgeoning artists and storytellers of all stripes, as well as the curious and open-minded and even (especially) the tiniest readers on a simple walkabout of the imagination.--Jesse Karp
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2022 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Karp, Jesse. "Creature: Paintings, Drawings, and Reflections." Booklist, vol. 119, no. 4, 15 Oct. 2022, p. 44. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A732242668/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=acd2377b. Accessed 20 May 2023.