Tales from Outer Suburbia

Author: Shaun Tan
 
Illustrator: Shaun Tan 

Peach's Picks Rating:

Year of publication: 2008

City of publication: New York

Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books

ISBN: 9780545055871

Author website: http://www.shauntan.net/
 
Illustrator website: http://www.shauntan.net/
 
Media used for illustrations:
There are 15 short stories in this book. Story titles and media used for illustrations follow:
"The Water Buffalo" - acrylic and oils on paper
"Eric" - graphite and colored pencil on paper
"Broken Toys" - gesso, acrylic and oils on paper 

"Distant Rain" - pencil, acrylic, oil & paper collage, using other people’s handwriting

"Undertow" - oil on wood

"Grandpa's Story" - ink, watercolor and ball-point pen

“No Other Country” - acrylic, oils, colored pencil, digital        

“Stick Figures” - acrylic and oils on paper

“The Nameless Holiday” - scraperboard / scratchboard

“The Amnesia Machine” - graphite pencil, digital

“Alert but Not Alarmed” - acrylic, gouache and colored pencil on paper

“Wake” - graphite pencil on paper

“Make Your Own Pet” - acrylics, oils, pencil, photocopied text and paper collage

“Our Expedition” - pastel crayon

“Night of the Turtle Rescue” - graphite pencil on paper

Acrylic and oils on paper are used to illustrate a page with the caption, " Warm regards from our Tuesday reading group!"

The endpapers appear to be drawings created using pencil.

Annotation: An anthology of 15 short, quirky stories set in "anywhere" suburbia. Realistic main characters live in realistic settings where they meet surreal characters and circumstances. Surrealist artwork accompanies the stories.

Personal reaction to the book: This book is startlingly off-balance and immensely riveting. The reader feels as though they have slowly and unwittingly stepped into the “Twilight Zone” television series. The text and the illustrations work perfectly together to create a Magritte-like/Dadaist world that one wants to escape, but is compelled to remain in and continue exploring. The stories and illustrations are open-ended, leading the reader to draw their own conclusions. This literary device lends itself for use in creative writing classes. Students might write a "what happens next" or a "what happened before" creative piece. Some of the stories evoke happiness and others evoke loneliness or ennui. All are thought-provoking. The piece titled "Grandpa's Story" suggests a long and loving relationship between a couple that weathers the storms of life. The illustrations accompanying the story "Make Your Own Pet" are evocative of the illustrations in the book The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales by Jon Scieszka. While the illustration techniques and styles vary, they are also astonishingly united in theme and mood. One unifying aspect of the illustrations is the use of sepia tones with red/orange accents found throughout the book. I suggest the publisher include a table of contents for ease of locating stories.

General curricular connections:

• Creative writing
• Literature / Reading for pleasure
• Art Classes – study of illustrations

Recommended grade levels:
School Library Journal recommends this book for grade 4 and up

Booklist recommends this book for grade 7-12

Peach’s Picks recommends this book for grade 7-12

Awards/Recognitions: 

Booklist starred review

Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books starred review

Kirkus Review starred review

Library Media Connection starred review

Publishers Weekly starred review

School Library Journal starred review

Junior Library Guild Selection
CBCA Book of the Year / Older Readers, 2009

Note: This book was selected from "The Top Ten Favorites List / Summer Session 2009", San Jose State University, School of Library and Information Science, LIBR 271A, Genres & Topics in Youth Literature, Professor Partington. It is a work of fiction in the form of a graphic novel.
 

Allusion in illustration: Page 11; Eric, the foreign exchange student, is holding a plug in his hand with the numbers “5672”. This number is the postal code for South Australia. The reader wonders if Eric is trying to plug into Southern Australia.

Allusion in illustration: Page 47; Grandma and Grandpa are shown as young adults. They are in a city searching for a place to stay. All signs read “No Vacancy”. This alludes is to Mary and Joseph in the Bible searching for a place to stay and the difficulties they experienced.

Simile: Pages 56-77; “The newly planted fruit trees died in the sand soil of a too bright backyard and were left like grave-markers under the slack laundry lines, a small cemetery of disappointment.”

Repetition in illustration: Pages 72-73; The artist repeats swirls in the illustrations of the sky, trees, shrubs and ground.

Use of sophisticated language: Page 38; “Their efficiency was impressive: They even had a special kind of hoist and a bath just big enough to comfortably hold a good-sized seagoing mammal.”

Book cover picture retrieved from: http://shop.scholastic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?productId=67771&langId=-1&storeId=10001&catalogId=10004