A full blog post on The Arrival is coming soon! The man in this book lands in a bewildering city of strange animals, floating objects and an indecipherable language, and his journey is shown entirely through pictures.įrom The Arrival. The Arrival, his most famous work, tells the familiar story of a migrant seeking new opportunity abroad, but tells it in a completely new way. Many of Shaun Tan's books feature characters who feel out of place in the culture and context they find themselves in. “It must be a cultural thing”, is the mother's explanation. Eric is endearingly tiny,(illustrations show him carrying a hollowed out peanut shell as luggage), and polite, so his strangeness is basically accepted by the family. But the text’s first hint that something is amiss comes when Eric tells the family he would prefer to sleep in the pantry. The exchange student’s hard-to-pronounce name is shortened, and the spare bedroom is all made up and ready for him.
In Eric, (which was also released as a stand-alone book due to its popularity), the narrator tells us about a foreign exchange student coming to stay with his family. Tales from Outer Suburbia, one of Tan’s books as both writer and illustrator, is a collection of stories of surreal goings on in an otherwise normal suburb. It’s easy to imagine the young artist creating imaginative worlds to escape from the blankness of a suburban upbringing. He became known at school for being good at drawing, and while still a teenager he began publishing illustrations for sci-fi and horror stories in small-press magazines. Shaun Tan grew up in the suburbs of Perth in Western Australia. Though dark at times, his writing is ultimately optimistic, and his drawings show the limitless scope of his imagination.ĭouble spread from Tales from Outer Suburbia Tales from Outer Suburbia So much so that bookshops in his native Australia and beyond have begun carving out sections for picture books for adults. His work is challenging and difficult to categorise, often addressing things not broached in standard picture-books. His work as an illustrator is unique and recognisable, he combines vivid, sweeping backgrounds with his distinctive character shapes. Shaun Tan is known for his surreal and socially conscious work, which manages to blend outlandish imagination with real-life relatability. This month we’ve chosen a living and working artist, the brilliant Shaun Tan. So far, we’ve written on classic authors like Elsa Beskow, cult illustrators like Tomi Ungerer and Tove Jansson, and modern picture book makers like Jon Klassen. Our Illustrator of the Month blog series is a chance to find out more about your favourite illustrators, or to discover new ones.
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