Tales From Outer Suburbia - Hardcover

Shaun Tan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1840113138 ISBN 13: 9781840113136

Publisher: Templar Publishing, 2009

Synopsis

A picture book from award-winning illustrator Shaun Tan, Tales from Outer Suburbia is a unique collection of original stories and illustrations. Shaun Tan, creator of The Arrival, The Lost Thing and The Red Tree, reveals the quiet mysteries of everyday life: homemade pets, dangerous weddings, and secret rooms filled with darkness and delight!

About this title

Review:

The term 'suburbia' may conjure visions of vast and generic sameness, but in his hypnotic collection of 15 short stories and meditations, Tan does for the sprawling landscape what he did for the metropolis in The Arrival. Here the emotional can be manifest physically ... and the familiar is twisted unsettlingly. Ideas and imagery both beautiful and disturbing will linger. Source: Publishers Weekly

'Tales of Outer Suburbia' transforms the realms of the everyday into the extraordinary. At points abstract and sometimes surreal, the short stories and fine art evoke childhood environs that are familiar but where emotion and experience is distorted. Reassessing the parameters of childhood and of the worlds children inhabit, this is a book that will be read and returned to time and again. Author: Jake Hope Source: The Bookseller

This beautifully illustrated book takes a quirky look at some of the mysteries of urban life. Once you start reading it's very hard to stop reading more of these short stories filled with darkness and delight. Author: Julia Eccleshare Source: Lovereading4Kids

Yet another masterpiece from the creator of the extraordinary The Arrival. You only have to peruse the cover to know that you are going to be in for a strange and wonderful trip through the more esoteric parts of this most accomplished of author/artist's imagination. Readers will find out why dogs bark in the middle of the night, and uncover the other mysteries of everyday life. Source: The Children’s Bookseller

This collection of stories is a work of art. The illustrations include etchings, woodcuts, collages, pastels, lithographs and paint, and are variously indebted to, among others, comic strips, Edward Hopper and Samuel Palmer. The images draw the viewer through street scenes and strange landscapes. Some of the stories are told partly or entirely in pictures, expressing ideas that make words seem inadequate. Meanwhile, the text relates surreal, lyrical, witty tales of exceptional events set in ordinary life: an attic leads to a mysterious garden in the middle of a house; two squabbling brothers go exploring to prove or disprove a bet that the world ends where the street map does - only to reach a final chasm that they can hang their legs over; and in one satirical gem, every household has its own intercontinental ballistic missile in the back yard. Author: Nicolette Jones Source: Sunday Times

This is a stunningly illustrated collection of quirky short stories from an award winning author. Featuring homemade pets, dangerous weddings and secret rooms filled with darkness and delight. Tales from Outer Suburbia is a truly beautiful book. Source: Mums and Dads magazine

Although a relative newcomer to picturebook creation, Shaun Tan has established himself as a leading practitioner. In Tales from Outer Suburbia he again offers something different from his earlier work, although not unexpectedly perhaps, given the directions we have seen him taking. .... Each of the stories brings something of a narrative jolt for the reader and each page turn carries a visual surprise - think Raymond Carver meets Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected undercut with a bit of The Far Side. The book itself is a superb artefact: the cover nudges at a sense that all is not predictable within, the endpapers are full of drawings from Tan's sketch book, the contents are displayed in the form of postage stamps. Every home, in suburbia and elsewhere, should have one of these. Source: Inis – The Children’s Books Ireland Magazine

This may be the most beautiful book you'll see all year. It's an illustrated collection of stories set in the Australian suburbs, about how the fantastic keeps erupting into the most mundane daily lives. Once you've read it, you may find yourself feeling as though an exchange student from another planet has dropped by and left a glowing matchbox garden in your kitchen cupboard. Source: The Guardian

"This is a book to treasure, with more to discover on each re-reading". Source: Book Trust

"Dip into this anywhere and you will come up with a gem. This is a truly unique book". Source: 2010 UKLA Children’s Book Awards – Special commendation

Book Description:

Do you remember the water buffalo at the end of our street, or the deep-sea diver we found near the underpass? Do you know why dogs bark in the middle of the night?

About this edition

• Publisher: Templar Publishing
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1840113138
• ISBN 13: 9781840113136
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 96
• Illustrator: Shaun Tan