CMIS Evaluation Fiction Focus

Unlike Zoe in the previous post, this performance will be happening at the Sydney Opera House - on 20 July. And elsewhere in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, too, throughout the month.

Shaun Tan’s The Red Tree has been realised in performance at last. The Australian Chamber Orchestra and youth choir Gondwana Voices are on tour to those cities with this new production that also has the powerful combination of Shostakovich and The Arrival on the program.  Tour dates and venues here and you can also watch Richard Tognetti talk about the production and view stills from the book.

Shaun’s latest nominations for The Arrival are for two Hugo Awards: Best Related Book and Best Professional Artist. These Science Fiction awards will be presented in Denver, Colorado early next month.

Shaun Tan has been honoured again for The Arrival, with a special citation in the Boston Globe Horn Book Awards announced yesterday. Special citations are rare in these awards, which are among the most prestigious in the US for children’s and young adult literature.

The awards have been presented since 1967. Winners are selected in three categories: Picture Book, Fiction and Poetry, and Nonfiction and two Honor Books may be named in each category.

2008 Winners are:

Fiction and Poetry: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (this title, available in Australia in September, has won several other awards in the US including a National Book Award.)

Non Fiction: The Wall : Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain by Peter Sís (to be reviewed in Fiction Focus, Issue 2, 2008)

Picture Book: At Night by Jonathon Bean (a book for young children, not yet available in Australia)

Neither of the two fiction Honor Books is available here yet: Savvy by Ingrid Law will be here in September and Shooting the Moon by Frances O’Roark Dowell has no indicated publishing date for Australia. Both are targeted at an upper primary / lower secondary readership.

Shaun Tan has hit the airwaves again, this time in conversation with Margaret Throsby on ABC Classic FM this morning. Listen or download the podcast here. The interview is punctuated with music selected by Shaun.

How does Shaun Tan do it? With The Arrival still winning accolades around the world, his new title, Tales from Outer Suburbia is officially released in Australia and New Zealand this weekend.

Shaun gave a glimpse at the recent CBCA Conference, when he shared the story of Eric, the overseas exchange student.

This is no wordless picture book. Far from it. Shaun might surprise many people - he is as adept with words as he is with art. And just as quirky. The fifteen stories are funny, whimsical, poignant, moving and touch on contemporary themes in very strange Tan-like settings with homages to suburban Perth thrown in. It’s hard not to be just a tad parochial as we collectively rejoice in Shaun’s success.

Tales from Outer Suburbia is a treat. Publication in the US is scheduled for later in the year. No British date in sight at this stage.

The awards for Shaun Tan’s The Arrival continue to flow in. At the weekend, this title received the award for Album of the Year at the Festival Internationale de la Bande Desinée at Angoulème. This festival is considered to be the Cannes of the comic world. We already knew anecdotally that the French had embraced this remarkable work. Now it is official. Congratulations (again), Shaun.