The Places You Will Go

Tales of Mystery and Imagination: An Interview with Shaun Tan

From StarMag

Interview by DAPHNE LEE

MOST people tend to associate picture books with simple stories, illustrated with simple, brightly coloured pictures. Of course, those with a more intimate knowledge of this medium of storytelling know that there is more to picture books than just pretty pictures that simply offer a visual description of a straightforward, basic text.

Picture books may deal with complex and difficult themes and subject matter, and this may be reflected in either the text or the art, or both.

Shaun Tan is a picture book artist whose work is definitely more complex than what the average person might expect to find in a alphabet or counting book. I know people who started collecting picture books after they read one of Tan's. The Melbourne-based 35-year-old started his career drawing for science fiction and horror novels. His art appears in picture books written by John Marsden (The Rabbits) and Gary Crew (The Viewer and Memorial) and he also illustrates his own books (The Red Tree, The Arrival, Tales from Outer Suburbia).

Tan's art is striking and detailed, rather surreal in content and style. The richly tinted, deeply unsettling images in The Red Tree manage to convey the idea of that small glimmer of hope that keeps many people going through the worst of times.

In The Arrival, the pictures are sepia toned, alternating between panaromic views and personal studies that relate the story of a man as he attempts to make a living and home in a new land.

Tales from Outer Suburbia is a collection of 15 short ... I hesitate to even call them stories. Some seem like fragments that have no beginning or end. Most tantalise the reader, offering glimpses into strange worlds or strange views of this world.

Tan's father hails from Ipoh, Perak, and met his Australian wife when he was an engineering student in an Australian university. Tan was born in Perth and visited Malaysia when he was a boy but doesn't remember much of it.

Apart from writing and painting, he has worked as a theatre designer, and did concept art for the films Horton Hears a Who and Pixar's WALL-E.

Hello, This is Your Bookcase Speaking

What Does Your Bookcase Say About You? is the title of the Times article about Ikea's Billy bookcase and how the way we display our books speaks volumes about our personalities and lifestyles.

My bookcases (and book-covered surfaces) show that I am disorganised and have too many books (or is that too few bookcases?).

My bedside table (left, on my side of the bed) is where I keep books I'm currently reading, books on my soon-to-be-read list, books I want to read but it's really a case of wishful thinking, and some of Elesh's bedtime reads.

My dressing table stool (right) is piled high with picture books. I've given up organising my picture book collection. Or at least, I've postponed trying to organise my picture book collection. They just go anywhere now. But I SWEAR, I will sort them out before 2010. My other bedside table holds magazines and some more picture books.

Here are the bookcases in my bedroom (left). What a mess. These cases have mostly non-fiction like lit crit, theology, essays, food and fashion writing, and ballet. Also, poetry, graphic novels, reference books, like encyclopaedias, and yet more picture books.

These (right) are some of the bookcases in my living room. I have one unit in the front, and six in the back of the room. They hold my novels (including children's and YA), my travel books, biographies and, yes, picture books. The case with the glass front contains my out of print books and special favourites like the Moomin books and Antonia Forests.

I would love floor to ceiling bookcases and a sliding ladder to navigate the collection. However, I have to admit that even then I would probably end up with realy messy disorganised shelves.

The Right to Informed Reading

By DAPHNE LEE

From Tots to Teens, StarMag

THIS column will appear the day after the start of banned books week (Sept 26-Oct 3) in the United States. Yes, even children’s books get banned, or at least challenged. Challenged means “attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group” (American Library Association).

However, in the United States, the Library Bill of Rights (ALA’s basic policy concerning access to information) states that, “Librarians and governing bodies should maintain that parents – and only parents – have the right and the responsibility to restrict the access of their children – and only their children – to library resources.”

According to the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, the list of most challenged children’s/young adult books in 2008 was topped by And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell (primarily for being pro-homosexual and anti-religious) and the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman (for political and religious reasons, and also for violent content).

In the past, In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak, the Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling, Dav Pilkey’s The Adventures of Captain Underpants and Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson have also been challenged, for various reasons.

Even Enid Blyton’s books have been the subject of controversy. Despite Madonna famously drawing a blank at her name, Blyton is the best-known children’s author in the world. Most English-speaking Malaysian children of my generation grew up reading her books, and the Famous Five series was even translated into Bahasa Malaysia. Yet, even in 1960, Blyton’s publisher, Macmillan, rejected one of her stories because it contained an “unattractive touch of old-fashioned xenophobia”.

Wild Wild World

Two items of interest for fans of Where the wild Things Are:

1. Spike Jonze's blog, We Love You So, about the upcoming film and its influences.

2. Terrible Yellow Eyes, a blog about an exhibition of art works inspired by the picture book.

Here's a sample from the second blog: Alan Cook's contribution, entitled Wild.

Puss in the Woods

By DAPHNE LEE

From Tots to Teens, StarMag

I LOVE cats, but even if you're not partial to flesh-blood-and-fur felines, you may find it hard to resist the charms of Dayan.

He is the creation of Japanese author/illustrator Akiko Ikeda and is the main character in four books translated and published by Dark Horse (best known as a publisher of comics). If you look at Ikeda's website (www.wachifield.com) it seems that there are more books, including picture books and novels, featuring the cat and his friends. However, they're in Japanese. The four titles thus far available in English are a little larger than Ladybird books, with the same hard covers, and fully-illustrated with the most charming and interesting watercolours. 

Dayan has grey and red-gold stripes, a white stomach and four white feet. He has huge slanted amber eyes - and in fact, Ikeda's characters are all notable for their large lustrous eyes.

Dayan lives in Wachifield, an imaginary world dominated by woodland and streams, and populated by the usual forest creatures like rabbits, frogs, foxes, otters and squirrels. There is an alligator though - his rather incongruous presence isn't explained, and that's one of the things I like about the way Ikeda writes. She doesn't overtell the story - there's no exposition at all, and characters and events appear in the books without introduction, but as if Ikeda is telling stories of creatures the reader already knows well. If you want every detail provided for you, then you may not like Ikeda's style, but I find it very fresh and light. The reader is free to be a co-creator with Ikeda - he may suppose and imagine whatever he wishes when contemplating the world of Wachifield.

Picture book of the Month: Brothers in Hope

September 2009

Brothers in Hope: The Story of the Lost Boys of Sudan

By Mary Williams

Illustrator: R. Gregory Christie

Publisher: Lee & Low Books, 40 pages

ISBN: 978-1584302322

This is one of the books I have chosen to be displayed at a special picture book exhibition at Kinokuniya Bookstore, KLCC Suria, Kuala Lumpur. The exhibition, called What a Wonderful World: A Multicultural Journey Through Pictures and Text will begin on 1st Oct and run for the entire month.

Brothers in Hope is about the Lost Boys of Sudan, children who lost their families and homes as a result of the civil wars in that country. Mary Williams is the founder of the Lost Boys Foundation and her book focuses on two boys, Garang and Chuti, who, like many others, found strength in themselves and each other, and survived the tragedy of their enormous losses.

R. Gregory Christie's illustrations are full of dense, powerful colours accented with dark lines and shadows. They pull the eyes to the page and show the horror and misery of war, as well as the joy of survival and friendship, especially in the expressions of the characters.

Love Between the Covers

From Tots to Teens, StarMag

I WONDER ... do guys ever fall in love ... or have crushes, at any rate, on characters in books? None of my male friends have confessed to such feelings, but several women I know continue to lose their hearts to men in fiction.

The first fictional male I loved was Theodore Laurence a.k.a Laurie in Little Women, but  went off him when he made the fatal mistake of marrying the wrong March sister.

Since then, there have been many others - Bran in Susan Cooper's The Grey King; Scott in Linda Blake's Laura novels; Antonia Forest's Patrick Merrick.

However, although many women who swoon over Pride and Prejudice's Mr Darcy, he has never interested me at all. Still, like Lizzie Bennet, I might change my mind if I ever visited Pemberley.

My most recent ink-and-paper crushes have been the male leads in three YA novels. Garret Freymann-Weyr is a genius at creating the most attractive male characters. There were Link and James from My Heartbeat; Kolya from The Kings Are Already Here; and Eamon from Stay With Me. Now there's perhaps the most swoon-worthy, to date, of the author's creations, Leigh Hunter from Freymann-Weyr's latest novel, After the Moment (Houghton Mifflin, 336 pages, ISBN: 978-0618605729).

Where's the Fun Gone?

By DAPHNE LEE

Tots to Teens, StarMag

THERE’S so much emphasis on literacy these days that I think people have forgotten or overlooked the joy of reading, ie, the simple pleasure of reading or listening to a good story – if they ever knew it in the first place.

I can’t think of anyone from my generation who enrolled in a reading programme or was taught phonics by a parent or at kindergarten. Why is it necessary today? Because parents are now more determined than ever that Kok Leong Jnr and Little Shanti get a head start in the race to Oxbridge and the Ivy League universities?

Your Writing Sucks But You'll Go Far

Several points in the Guardian article (Why Kelman's Rage at the Genrefication of Scottish Literature Concerns Us All) should resonate with Malaysian writers, editors and publishers.

I nearly snorted when I came to the bit that goes: "While we may express private reservations about the work of another writer, we don't scupper their chances by saying this publicly."

Well, I know at least one highly-respected book reviewer who says one thing in private and another in public. Personally, I don't like the practice. I don't see how being "kind" about mediocre work helps raise the standard of writing and publishing in Malaysia. I understand that it hurts to have your stories torn apart by critics, but if you want to be a writer, criticism is something you have to expect and get used to.

I'm all for (as a reviewer, editor and publisher) giving one's honest opinion, offering constructive criticism, and (as a writer) taking it on the chin and learning from it.

(One doesn't become a reviewer, editor or publisher to make friends. Join a knitting circle for that.)

New Children's Fiction

This is very late but you know what they say ...

Anyway, Reavers by Emily Diamand was announced the winner of inaugural Times/Chicken House Children's Fiction Competition winner, in March (!).

Over 2000 entries were received and Reavers was finally picked from five shortlisted works of fiction.

You can read more about the shortlist and the winner here and here.