Shaun Tan is a bestselling author and illustrator whose books aren’t easily pigeonholed: some you’ll find in the children’s section of a bookstore, others are shelved with graphic novels. They’re filled with beautiful landscapes and rich textures, but with a quietly sinister undercurrent. In Tan’s bestseller The Arrival, the protagonist is a man fleeing a shadowy country full of ominous monsters. In The Lost Thing, which was adapted into an Oscar-winning short film, a boy helps a strange, mechanical creature find its way home. None of his stories are violent or scary but, Tan says, they’re “a little bit weird and dark.”
So are Tan’s picture books for children, or are they short graphic novels for adults? “I used to protest loudly against anybody who would categorize them as children’s books,” Tan says. These days, he’s less concerned with writing to a specific audience and more interested in experimenting with narrative. Many of his books have only a few words of text on each page, opening up the stories to individual readers’ interpretations. Tan’s latest book, The Rules of Summer, follows two brothers through their summer adventures with only a single “rule” appearing next to each imaginative illustration: “Never eat the last olive at a party;” “Never ruin a perfect plan.”
And now that he has an infant daughter, “I suddenly realize what picture books are used for,” Tan laughs. “It never occurred to me that parents sit down with their kids and go through and examine the pictures.”
Bonus Track: Kurt's extended conversation with Shaun Tan
Music Playlist
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Feeding
Artist: Michael YezerskiAlbum: The Lost Thing (Original Soundtrack)Label: Passion Pictures Australia -
Picture Book
Artist: The KinksAlbum: Album Classics: The Best of The KinksLabel: Sanctuary
The Rabbits, one of Shaun Tan’s earliest works, is an allegory of the colonization of Australia. In Tan’s illustrations, Australia’s aboriginals are represented by small creatures that closely resemble native marsupials, while British colonizers are drawn as mechanical rabbits. The Rabbits is written by John Marsden and illustrated by Tan.
In The Red Tree, which is both written and illustrated by Tan, he begins playing with traditional narrative structure: the book is made up of self-contained images paired with simple, declarative sentences. This illustration is accompanied by the text, “Darkness overcomes you.”
An illustration from The Lost Thing, written and illustrated by Tan. The book was adapted into an Oscar-winning animated short. In this page from the book, a young man encounters a strange creature (the lost thing) that doesn’t seem to fit anywhere in his bland bureaucratic city.
The Arrival tells the story of an immigrant leaving his home and family for a better life in a new land. The old world is populated with sinister tentacles — but it’s unclear if they are real or imagined. The sense of foreboding in this image is typical of Tan’s style.
In another scene from The Arrival, the protagonist arrives in the new world. Although the book takes place in a fantastic surreal world, Tan referenced photos of Ellis Island immigrants in the early 1900’s when he painted the illustrations.
Tan chose to eliminate all text in The Arrival. Instead, it combines the detailed illustrations of picture books with the paneled storytelling of graphic novels. In this panel, the immigrant settles into his new city.
For Rules of Summer, rich illustrations are once again paired with a sparse narrative. In this case, a series of mysterious rules are paired with images of the two young brothers breaking them — not always by accident. This rule is “Never drop your jar.”
Another image from Rules of Summer, accompanying the rule “Never forget the password.
“Never step on a snail,” from Rules of Summer.
“Never lose a fight.” Tan says that he had to alert his own older brother that Rules of Summer is not autobiographical.