Shaun Tan: Rules of Summer, Eric, The Red Tree, Rabbits

I saw The Red Tree discussed some time ago some where ago, all memory of specifics gone, but it's what got me started on reading Tan so it was gratifying to finally wrap back to it. I still struggle some with his work; these first two reviews are from 2020 (? what is time??) & as per my review of The Red Tree, Rules of Summer actually left a stronger impression than my initial mixed reaction; but I also feel like there's some picture books which manage to be weirder and more memorable with less desperate effort. Still a valiant effort! Anyway, he still has short fiction/bind-ups I haven't read, but I'll get to them if I get to them; I'm not going to hang on to 100% his body of work.


Title: Rules of Summer
Author: Shaun Tan
Published: Arthur A. Levine Books, 2014 (2013)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 50
Total Page Count: 328,825
Text Number: 1156
Read Because:
Review: This is my favorite Tan book so far. It's expansive and transporting—the scale of the panels and the artful cognitive dissonance of the normal placed just so within the bizarre (or vice versa) is fantastic and reminds me of the best Van Allsburg, but with Tan's distinctive steampunk/urban aesthetic. The use of color and texture is phenomenal.

I wish I liked the narrative as much. Building from the arbitrary rules of summer play into a present, bizarre landscape based on those rules is delightful; but that effective sense of scale also turns "struggling to keep up with a sibling's rules" into "jailed for a literal thousand years" which makes it less playful (and not as wholesome as the resolution wants to be) and more unsettling, more cruel. There's room for that in picture books, but room isn't made here; it creates a tonal whiplash. I wish the conflict remained in the siblings vs. their world (or younger sibling vs. older sibling's concept of the world), rather than sibling vs. sibling.


Title: Eric
Author: Shaun Tan
Published: Scholastic, 2020 (2008)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 50
Total Page Count: 373,775
Text Number: 1376
Read Because: reading the author, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: This shares themes with but is less ambitious than some of Tan's other work, and may be the better for it. It's slight but sweet and effective, with distinctively cute/weird art and a clever use of grayscale.


Title: The Red Tree
Author: Shaun Tan
Published: Lothian Children's Books, 2001
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 510,205
Text Number: 1841
Read Because: reading the author
Review: Fantastic, literally and descriptively: a lot of that big, strange Tan art, which means rich colors and rambling dieselpunk dystopias, existential and nihilistic vibes. Like basically all depression metaphors, the happy ending is utterly unearned but still satisfying. Some picture books aren't really for kids, and I don't mind that—they can be graphic short stories, briefly evocative and particularly visually indulgent because of the constrained length. Rules of Summer is still the best Tan, though; he can get so unsubtle, depression here, conformity in Lost & Found, to say nothing of his really message-heavy works, but Rules of Summer plays up the weird to good effect.


Title: Rabbits
Author: John Marsden
Illustrator: Shaun Tan
Published: 2003
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 510,235
Text Number: 1842
Read Because: reading the artist
Review: Tan's art—surreal, alien, with geometric character designs and an evocative sense of scale—elevates a text which is such an on-the-nose allegory for colonialism that it feels flat, feels something worse even than didactic: simplistic.