CMIS Evaluation Fiction Focus

Yea, two more of our own on the winners’ lists of the World Fantasy Awards, announced overnight.

Best novel – Margo Lanagan (Tender Morsels) was in a dead heat with Jeffrey Ford for The Shadow Year.

Best artist – yes, you’ve guessed correctly – the inimitable Shaun Tan.

Congratulations to both.

All winners here.

Sure, the Girlfriend Fiction series is Pink Lit, but that does not mean fluff. Not at all. As is demonstrated by Kate Constable sharing the 2009 Psychologists for Peace Children’s Peace Literature Award for Winter of Grace.

The judges couldn’t separate Kate’s book from Christine Harris’s delightful Audrey title – Audrey goes to Town, one aimed at a much younger readership.

The Girlfriend books all have a romantic element, of course, but often tackle deeper issues too. Winter of Grace examines aspects of belief, faith and social activism while maintaining a credible romantic plot. Congratulations to Kate and Christine.  This is one of the less trumpeted awards, but the biennial prize is one to covet. Read about past winners here.

Meanwhile, over in Germany, Shaun Tan continues his award-winning way, taking out the 2009 Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis for Geschichten aus der Vorstadt des Universums, better known to us as ……..

Gosh, he’s good, and still so young! What delights await us in years to come?

With Tales from Outer Suburbia, Shaun Tan has proven what we have long suspected: that his talent is not confined to illustration. He is as adept with words as he is with images.

Shaun Tan has developed an international reputation as an outstanding and original illustrator. He was born in Fremantle in 1974 and currently lives and works in Melbourne. As a child Shaun enjoyed reading; writing and illustrating poems and stories; and spent a lot of time drawing dinosaurs, robots and space ships. He participated in a special art program at secondary school but since then he has largely taught himself the art of book illustration. At the University of WA  he completed an honours degree in English literature and art history, theory and criticism.

In 1992 Shaun won the International Illustrators of the Future Contest, the first Australian to achieve this award. He has been illustrating young adult fiction and picture books since 1996.

Since winning the 2002 NSW Premier’s Prize for Children’s Books with The Red Tree Shaun Tan has been featured on the 7:30 Report on the ABC and in the Weekend Australian Magazine (June 22-23, 2002), rare publicity for a children’s illustrator or author. From CMIS Author page.

The title Tales from Outer Suburbia appears to be a homage to a much-loved Western Australian collection of short stories, Tom Hungerford’s Stories from Suburban Road. Certainly many of the images in the book are familiar to those who know Perth’s suburbs.

Shaun talks about Tales from Outer Suburbia:

Dig Deeper

The author

Shaun Tan’s website

Interviews and speeches

• Interview on the ABC Articulate blog
• Interview – Australian Edge blog
• Panel Borders : The Art of Shaun Tan - Interview on Resonance FM, London
• Radio National Book Show – transcript only
  
• 2009 Colin Simpson Memorial Lecture
• HSC Online – Shaun Tan reveals how he became an illustrator, describes his process and influences and reflects on the distinction between commercial and fine art.

The Text

• Extract (PDF)
• Slide show from New York Entertainment

Reviews

• CMIS
  
• The Guardian
• The Australian
• Sydney Morning Herald
• School Library Journal
• Teacher reviews from the Allen & Unwin website

Awards for Tales from Outer Suburbia

• Winner of the 2008 Aurealis Award for Best Illustrated Book/Graphic Novel
• Winner of the 2009 Ditmar Award for Best Artwork
• Winner ABIA Illustrated Book of the Year 2009
• Winner 2009 Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year – Older Readers
• Category Winner in the 2008 Indie Awards – Children’s Book
• Shortlisted for the 2008 Golden Inky Award
• Shortlisted for the 2009 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children’s Literature

Awards and accolades for Shaun Tan

• Winner 1992 International Illustrators of the Future Contest
• Nominated 2010 Astrid Lindgren Award

Picture Books illustrated by Shaun Tan

• The Viewer, written by Gary Crew, 1997 – Winner, Crichton Award, 1998; Notable Book, CBCA Picture Book of the Year, 1998
• The Rabbits, written by John Marsden, 1998 – Aurealis Conveners’ Award for Excellence, 1999;  Winner, CBCA Picture Book of the Year, 1999; Spectrum Gold Award for Book Illustration, 1999
• Memorial, written by Gary Crew, 1999; Honour Book, CBCA Picture Book of the Year, 2000

Picture Books written and illustrated by Shaun Tan

• The Lost Thing, 1999 – Honour Book, CBCA Picture Book of the Year, 2000; Shortlisted, Young Adult, WA Premier’s Book Awards, 1999
• The Red Tree, 2001 – Winner, Patricia Wrightson Award, NSW Premier’s Literary Awards; Honour Book, CBCA Picture Book of the Year, 2002; Shortlisted, Children’s Books, WA Premier’s Book Awards, 2001
• The Arrival, 2006 – multiple awards including Winner, Golden Aurealis Award for Best Short Story, 2006; Winner, Aurealis Award for Best Young Adult Short Story, 2006

Adaptations of Shaun Tan’s works

• The Red Tree, a play based on Tan’s book of the same name, was commissioned for the Out of the Box Festival of Early Childhood in 2004.
• The Australian Chamber Orchestra commissioned music in 2008 for The Red Tree, which was performed by Gondwana Voices. The site contains a podcast introduction and video.
• The Lost Thing is being adapted as an animated short film by Passion Pictures (UK).
• Sydney band Lo-Tel was inspired by the artwork from The Lost Thing to record an album of the same name, incorporating the art into the cover design.
• The Lost Thing has also been adapted as a play by the Jigsaw Theatre Company, in Canberra as the main event for the National Gallery of Australia’s Children Festival in 2004. It also inspired the theme for Chookahs! Kids Festival in Melbourne in 2006, where it was performed, and during the festival children participated in many different activities based on concepts from the book.
• The Arrival was adapted by WA’s Spare Parts Puppet Theatre in July 2006 (before publication of the book) , using digital animation, puppetry and acting.
• Not so much an adaptation as a collaboration, the book of the exhibition Odditoreum at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney.

[Mostly From Fiction Focus Special Feature on The Arrival, Vol. 21 (1), 2007.]

Finally, the Lu Rees Archives in Canberra has a guide to research materials on Shaun Tan and his work.

One can only wonder what treat is coming our way next.

No, not a new Shaun Tan person. That could never be. But a new Shaun Tan book. Just out. We’re excited. Smart move by the Powerhouse Museum.

What think you?

Both ask questions, but is one more likely to be picked up at random than the other?

The US cover of Tales from Outer Suburbia

or the Australian and British one?

We know, we know. There’s an unabashed Shaun Tan bias on this blog. But we had to let you know that he has been nominated for a Chesley Award for Tales from Outer Suburbia.Twice.

The Chesleys are given by the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists, and this time Shaun is up for Best Interior Illustration and Artistic Achievement.

Winners will be announced at Anticipation, the 67th World Science Fiction Convention in Montreal 6-10 August.

Not that we can recall a bad review anywhere for Shaun Tan. But Tales from Outer Suburbia gets a rave from SF Said, author of the Varjak Paw series:

This may be the most beautiful book you’ll see all year. It’s an illustrated collection of stories set in the Australian suburbs, about how the fantastic keeps erupting into the most mundane daily lives. Once you’ve read it, you may find yourself feeling as though an exchange student from another planet has dropped by and left a glowing matchbox garden in your kitchen cupboard.

Shaun Tan’s lecture on visual narratives, given on 28 March for the Australian Society of Authors, can now be heard on ABC Radio National’s Book Show. The annual Colin Simpson Memorial Lecture is a highlight of the ASA calendar.

Watch the video on the ASA site or listen to the broadcast. The podcast will be available for downloading for a short time only.

Noted during the week:

• A very nice auction price for a first edition of Madeleine L’Engle’s Wrinkle in Time : USD$10,800.
• ABC Radio’s Book Show on Books for Children, with Sonya Hartnett. The podcast will be available online for a short time only.
• The US School Library Journal on ten children’s novels that would make good movies, including The Arrival. Wonder if they realise that it has already been adapted for the stage:

The Arrival by Shaun Tan – Hear me out.  Shaun Tan already has connections to the cinematic world, right?  I mean he did do some work for Pixar’s Wall-E after all.  So all you have to do is give him full creative control and then maybe hire someone like Miyazaki to pair with him.  Tan could keep the plot intact, Miyazaki could lend his own unique touch, and voila!  Instant classic.  Extra points if the film makes me cry as often as the book does.  Then again, perhaps you’d rather not make all the characters in this book into anime big-eyed monstrosities.  In such a case as that, what about Sylvain Chomet who did The Triplets of Belleville?  Or just scrap everything and let Tan have ultimate control over animation as well.  It could be a silent film too, with just music and nonsense language (which would ultimately complement the book better than anything else).

• Author interviews on YouTube, thanks to Readergirlz

At the Hugo Awards for Science Fiction on Saturday, there were two awards that Shaun Tan didn’t win. Mind you, the final report indicates that he was a close second (44 votes to 48) for the Best Related (SciFi) Book for The Arrival. This Award was won by Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction by Jeff Prucher.

Shaun was also in contention for Best Artist and came fifth in this category, which was won by Stephan Martiniere.