Tales From Outer Suburbia

I loved this book from first sight on amazon. I had to order it and I was giddy/eager for it to arrive. When I first sat down to read this book I felt overcome with emotion. I felt that if someone had sat down specifically with the objective to make a book that would delight and please me, that they could not have done a better job. I am seriously infatuated with this book and blown away by Shaun Tan's expressive art and compelling stories. It feels like being thirsty, then drinking something so amazing that you never want to stop drinking it. I am so happy that there are minds like Shaun Tan's that create lovely, intricate, engaging art for our enjoyment. I have greatly enjoyed sharing this book with other people that I know and I keep it on my desk so that more people can enjoy it. The stories are intriguing/touching/thought-provoking. The art is deep with detail and nuance. I love this book!

I bought this book thinking it was an art book, but it's not. Tales From Outer Suburbia is more of an illustrated story book containing 15 short fantasy stories. And it's a children's book, but more for those above 12 year old because some of the stories are, well, very surreal. It's the surrealism of the illustrations that really caught my attention. Shawn Tan has a knack of storytelling mixing illustrations and words. He would sometimes end a story arc with a two page illustration to bring the story in full effect. For example, in the story called Grandpa's Story, there will be pages of single panels to show his Scavenger Hunt journey before he can marry. In another story Distant Rain, it was told in the form of a newspaper print. The stories are really surreal and imaginative. Two things come to my mind when reading are Roald Dahl and Big Fish the movie. All great works of surrealism. Anyone who likes the two should like this book. This should be 4 stars but rated 5 by mistake. (More pictures are available on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)

So creative, imaginative, magical.

Shaun Tan is an amazing author. His first critically acclaimed book, The Arrival, is a gorgeous, wordless work of fiction that is supremely accessible but contains the depth of adult fiction; this book carries that trope forward in beautifully illustrated and sublimely-written fashion. It is a series of short stories that feel a bit more like loosely-linked vignettes, gathering together the many peculiar experiences that make childhood fascinating and a little bit frightening at the same time. As Secondary English teacher in public schools, I have found infinite uses for this book in the classroom; a personal favorite from the collection is "Our Expedition", which illustrates the difference between "literal" and "figurative" in an utterly approachable way and makes for a wonderful introduction to figurative language. While this book is definitely written at a roughly middle school level, it contains a depth that could certainly make it useful even in a high school setting, and enjoyable to read even as an adult. I highly recommend this book to anyone with a sharp wit and a love of the surreal.

Have had this book myself for years and now I gift it to anyone getting married. Great for bedtime stories. Love it.

My first introduction to Tan's work, like many people's, was The Arrival . Wordless, personal, rich, and made monumental by its sepia palette, it impressed me as few illustrated texts have. This clearly comes from the same hand, the same whimsical sense of imagery, the same underlying sense of sorrow and mystery, the same open-ended world where "closure" has no meaning. Except this is mostly words, some short-short stories with whole-page illustrations. I'm a reading person, about as much as anyone, but the visual stories have a special hold on me - one that this was never able to exert. I like it, lots, make no mistake, but it lacks the magic of Tan's pure illustration, of Bantock's early publications, of Masereel's and Ward's pictorial novels. It's good, very good, but not the kind I'll see again and again in my mind in years to come. -- wiredweird

I've loved this author for a while so I got a copy of this one (the first one I've read by Shaun tan), as a birthday present for my baby cousin next month. I'm very pleased with the quality and the illustrations are just as beautiful as I remember.

I teach middle school English, and on a day I had to throw away a lesson plan that completely bombed in my first few periods, I needed to quickly come up with something to do with the next several classes. I had just purchased this book and decided to read a few of the stories to my 8th graders. After reading "Stick Figures," I had the kids write the story from the stick figures' point of view. Some kids loved the stories, and some thought they were "stupid," but all of them thought they were interesting and different. The stories made them think. Whether they liked the stories or not, they were all excited to do the writing assignment afterward and came up with some crazy stories!

Page 1. A Man stands on a suburban street holding a hosepipe. Floating down the street is a woman in a boat. The boat has its own miniature cloud which hovers precisely over the section of the boat where flowers are arrayed on the gunwhale. The cloud waters the flowers. There is a seagull standing at the stern of the boat. The man on the street watches the woman approach, his paltry hosepipe cannot hope to bring relief to the baking grass. The woman rows serenely on. Page 8. Eric: the exchange student who came to stay and the wonderful gift that he left. Page 24. broken toys. The story of the man in the diving suit who spoke Japanese. During which he is taken to the house of Mrs Bad News after the children do the Special Handshake of Unbreakable agreement. Page 28. Distant Rain: a poem. Includes the words: "the truth is that unread poetry will almost always be just that. Doomed to join a vast invisible river of waste that flows out of suburbia" Page 36. undertow - a story about a dugong (a plant-eating mammal that lives in the Indian Ocean). Page 40. grandpa's story: the story of the wedding on the other side of the hill. Page 65. Stick figures. Young children sometimes dress them in old clothes and hats as if they were dolls or scarecrows, and are always scolded by parents, whose reasons are unclear. `Just don't,' they say sternly. Some older boys take great delight in beating them with baseball bats, golf clubs, or whatever is at hand, including the victim's snapped off limbs. With careful aim a good strike will send the head - a faceless clod of earth - flying high into the air. The body remains passively upright until smashed to splinters between heels and asphalt. Page 80. wake, which begins: "on a cold night last winter there was a fire at the house of a man who only days before had beaten his dog to death." Page 92. night of the turtle rescue - which ends with the words "keep going, keep going, keep going." The pictures are all and everything. The words don't really explain them, because this is outer suburbia where a dog may speak French, a cat may be a saint, and a TV may grow arms to hold the very small children placed in front of it. Disturbing, surreal, compulsively alarming, mischievous, beautiful and strange.

Aunque se supone que es un libro infantil va mucho mas allá. Los dibujos son geniales. Compré la edición en inglés debido a que el autor es Australiano.

dieses Buch ist eine Reise in deine Kindheit, deine Träume (obwohl es gar nicht so speziell deine sind, vielmehr unser aller Träume....), jede Story ist ein Eintauchen in eine phantastische neue Welt. Es sind kleine Geschichten mit grandiosen Zeichnungen. Ich hab mir etliche Seiten herauskopiert und aufgehängt - weil es immer sehen will, weil es mich aufbaut, weil es so voller SEELENKRAFT ist, wie soll ich es anders ausdrücken.... voller Ideen, voller Details, beeindruckend, erwärmend, mit der message "Gib nicht auf, das Leben ist schön, wir alle sind Menschen, die Welt ist es wert, hier zu leben." Danke Shaun.

Ótimo

ショーン・タンの作品はとても不可思議で、それでいて温かみがある。特に、彼が創造した生き物が出てくる話が多いが、彼が想像した世界では人間と同じように全く違和感なく存在しているのだ。とは言え、人間（特に大人）からはどこかマイナーなものとして見られているという点で、現実社会にはびこる無意識の差別を思わせる。 ショーン・タンの面白いところは、独特のタッチの絵はもちろん、淡々と進むストーリーの中、思わぬ形で人間の深層心理に触れて人間の弱さ、哀しさ、そして温かさを感じさせてくれるところではないだろうか。