The Viewer

It’s scary. Really very scary, if you stop and think about it. But with stunning pictures, as always with Shaun Tan.

The words are by Gary Crew, so I suppose I should mostly blame his imagination for this creepiness. The story is about Tristan, who is interested in unusual things. One day he finds something a bit like the old-fashioned Viewmaster which children have always liked. Except this seems to have a life of its own. And it doesn’t show terribly nice pictures.

I’m relieved I never owned one of these. If I had, and still had it, I’d have to throw it away.

As you can understand, The Viewer is a picture book, but not for small children.

Back to Tristan. His life is taken over by this picture monstrosity, and he loses control. And when his mother…

A Little, Aloud

This is one anthology that I won’t be able to carry around with me in order to catch all its participating authors for autographs. Many are dead, and anyway, there are so many of them. Many means good, because there is a tremendous variety and choice, and once you’ve read what you fancy, you might pick something you don’t. That way you discover that is actually also perfectly fine.

You don’t always get anthologies intended to be read aloud, which of course doesn’t stop you from doing so. Short stories and excerpts and poems are just right for that bedtime read, when you are praying you won’t be sitting on the edge of the bed half the night. This book obligingly tells you how long you can expect to spend reading each contribution, so no nasty surprises.

The royalties for this collection of good reads go to The Reader Organisation, which has as its aim ‘reading and health.’ Very nice to see those two words used together. I frequently sit down with a book even when far too many little jobs and crises scream at me that my attention is of the utmost importance. I know that I will feel so much better after a read.

Foreworded by Michael Morpurgo (naturally) and with blurbs by Philip Pullman and Stephen Fry (two men whose voices I just love listening to), the book begins with Instructions by Neil Gaiman. I mistakenly thought he was needed to tell us what to do, but it was actually a proper poem.

Many of the stories in here are ones I have already read, as part of the novel they hail from or as works in their own right. They have, for instance, had the good taste to pick my favourite Shaun Tan story, Broken Toys. There are excerpts from Siobhan Dowd’s The London Eye Mystery, Joan Aiken’s The Wolves of Willoughby Chase as well as Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce.

You have Shakespeare and Kipling, Stevenson and Larkin, and even good old Anon. I haven’t read them all. Yet. This is another of those volumes I want to keep somewhere near, just to dip into. The pile for dipping is getting taller, but that just can’t be helped.

I will want to dip.

(Apologies to all those, dead or alive, whose names I haven’t listed. They are many. And how marvellous to be able to share classic writers in an easy bite size form with a child.)

Another Edinburgh interview

The really weird thing about interviews (one of them, anyway) is when ‘my’ subjects begin interviewing each other. I enjoyed the one in the Guardian, on Saturday, where Neil Gaiman disguised himself as a Grauniad reporter and talked to Shaun Tan.

He’s had longer admiring Shaun’s work, and they have bumped into each other a few times. That’s how I intend explaining away the fact that Neil’s questions were better than mine.

For various reasons I don’t have ‘my’ own photo of this. But as I’ve hung around the yurt – and the photographers therein – for the past few years, I decided to ask Colin McPherson if he minded me using his picture, which was the one in the article. The nice man said I could, which is very much appreciated.

And if you want to know what’s going on, Shaun is looking both happy and relieved because Neil is pointing to where I was at the time, which was diagonally across Charlotte Square, and most likely still on my broom. It was a day when I needed to be in two places at once, but wasn’t. I’ll need to work on that skill.

I’m not sure if Shaun claims to have a sketchbook full of nuts, but he might have. There is a Finnish joke, which isn’t bad. (I have always looked west, for Norwegian jokes, and have never concerned myself too much with what they do in the other direction.)

Not talking too much to your brother seems like sensible siblinghood, and I will never be able to look at the grout in my bathroom in the same way again. But no way am I ‘shaving my leg’ for a Shaun Tan tattoo, however much I admire his little drawings.

Very nice to see two of my boys getting together like this. And so typical that Neil almost talks more than Shaun.

(Although I need to go all nerdy and point out it was this year, 2011, that Shaun was awarded the Astrid Lindgren prize… Bet it was a Graun typo.)

The Bird King

and other sketches. How to review a book on art?

Shaun Tan’s Bird King book is so beautiful that I’d like to tear it to pieces. And then I’d frame the pages and hang them on my walls. But I can’t really do that. Can I?

Many of the pictures are well known, because they come from Shaun’s other books. Or they are sketches for those books, or for his film work. Sketches are interesting things. I’ve never understood how artists can make sketches not to be used, and then reproduce what they sketched for the ‘real’ piece. For me it would be luck if something turned out well. You can’t hope to have it happen again.

But it seems you can, if you’re a professional. Or even ‘just’ an artist. Someone who knows what they are doing.

For each of the ‘chapters’ of this book Shaun has written an introduction that explains how he thinks and how he works. For instance, he doesn’t feel that small sketches done on ordinary paper with a cheap biro belong in this book. But they are there, and just as interesting as the more ‘proper’ art. And I’m glad he mentioned sketches done in cheap biro, since I’ll be forever ashamed for having handed Shaun just that (cheap biro) when I asked him to sign this book for me. I suppose that makes it as much art as this whole book.

He has certainly ‘taken a line for a walk’ (Paul Klee) here. This book is full of the weird and wonderful world Shaun sees where the rest of us just don’t.

Perhaps if I buy a second copy, and rip it up?

Bookwitch bites #62

I’m beginning to feel like the Sesame Witch, and here I am again, bringing you the letter T.

For those of you who haven’t yet heard the voice of Shaun Tan (yes I know, I go on about him a lot), here he is  in the Guardian podcast, interviewed by Michelle Pauli in Stockholm earlier this year.

Shaun Tan podcast.

And please note how clever those young children are, being interviewed in a foreign language. (Just wanted to point that out.)

This week the winner of another Swedish award for literature was announced. Tomas Tranströmer is this year’s Nobel prize winner, and I read somewhere that he is the most translated poet in the world. So many Ts…

Continuing with the awards, Theresa Breslin has just won the Young Quills prize for historical fiction, with Prisoner of the Inquisition. Is it my imagination, or is Theresa and that book of hers winning a lot?

Before I leave you to go and drink some tea, I will return briefly to the letter B and the blasphemous and banned Meg Rosoff. Her darling creature Eck, that we all adore and would love to call our own, is about to become real. Sort of. In the book he must have been created by Bob (God, to you and me), since Bob created everything.

In real life, Eck – who has a very long tongue – is being created by a Mr Godlee, who is a friend of Meg’s. You couldn’t make it up, could you? In order to part with money, please contact Meg.

There was no dog…

Bookwitch bites #59

Happy 95th Birthday to Mary Stewart! It’s so fantastic to know that someone I began admiring over forty years ago is still alive, although retired from writing those wonderful novels with the perfect heroines and their dashing love interests.

If I hadn’t been so forgetful earlier, I wouldn’t have needed to ask Shaun Tan about who handed over the Astrid Lindgren award earlier this year. I had carefully saved this photo of Shaun with Crown Princess Victoria. He looks fairly pleased, and she is wearing a nice blue dress.

And while not exactly an award, who’d have thought that Severus Snape would turn out to be so popular? Snape won the Bloomsbury vote for favourite Harry Potter character, followed by Hermione and Sirius. I suppose it was all that moody and half romantic swoosh of the cape that did it.

I’m not in the slightest surprised that Michelle Magorian’s wonderful book Just Henry has been picked by ITV to be filmed. Actually, it has already been filmed, as far as I understand, and it will turn up on television this Christmas. That’s definitely something to look forward to.

A little sooner than that there is the Bath Kids LitFest later this month. Surprise, surprise, but I’m not going to be there. Again. I’m still recuperating from excessive LitFesting. One year I really will make it down to that very beautiful city. Decades after my first visit I still remember all the tearooms I found. Anyway, enough about food I’m not going to eat. They have a relay blog story thing going during the period leading up to the start of the festival and on until the ‘bitter end.’ Lots of big author names are taking part, and even the odd blogger.

Click here for the first instalment. Then you need to follow the trail for each chapter.

I’m now getting ready to dance on the table, so have no more time for this blogging business. See you tomorrow!

Shaun Tan

I can’t believe I was sitting there asking Shaun Tan where he gets his ideas from! Honestly.

OK, so I didn’t put it exactly like that, but it was more or less what I meant. At least he didn’t reply that he shops at Plots’r'us. Would have served me right.

Maybe it’s easier to go slightly crazy when you feel you’re in the presence of someone great? In fact, I suspect Shaun was afraid he was in the presence of someone weird. (And how right he was!) He took a little while to warm up, but when he did, he even insulted Brussels sprouts.

And I did what I do so well; sat there and said ‘yes’ and ‘mm’.

Before I dig myself even deeper, I’d better send you over to the interview. It’s short, but it’s nice. Like Shaun.

Some Randomness and other news

Did I mention being tired? I’m so intolerant of this life in high lit society.

Anyway. We are sitting in a hotel lounge drinking caffeine. It almost helps. And then Jacqueline Wilson arrived. She came and sat in the lounge for a bit, and at that point Caroline Lawrence walked through the place, buckskin outfit and all. Caroline stopped to greet her and I couldn’t help hearing the word six-shooter mentioned.

Daughter had fit of giggles, but don’t let that turn you off.

We arrived bright and early this morning, called in for Theresa Breslin’s tickets and went and waited for Shaun Tan, who had a small free window for us to chat. We chatted, and that was just as nice as you’d think it would be. PR Jayne also turned out to be both nice and efficient.

While waiting we saw Orion’s Nina, who was in need of caffeine. So was Gillian Philip, who was up and out of bed far earlier than she should have been. Bloomsbury’s Emma and Ian were also early risers, but that’s nothing compared to the High School pupils from Oban who got up at the crack of dawn to come here to hear Theresa talk books. (In other words, a bit like me.) And aren’t Theresa’s boots absolutely divine?

More Random names with Malorie Blackman, who was signing after her early school event. She looked like she was in for a long stint judging by the length of her queue.

Time now to go hear Caroline explain away her six-shooter* comment.

(* There is inflation in shooters. It was a seven-shooter by the time we got there.)

A masterclass with Shaun Tan

Those pillows were definitely not necessary. Or perhaps the couple in Shaun Tan’s audience last night had been shopping?

The word masterclass makes me suspect that whatever is coming will be boring. But I didn’t for a moment think Shaun would be, and he wasn’t. In fact, I almost wish more events were done in this way. It’s not for everyone, but for those who can.

Charlotte Square’s Corner Theatre was almost full to bursting. I was glad to see Mal Peet there, making up for missing the other Aussie earlier on. Nikki Gamble was there, but Andersen’s Clare was stuck on the train home and was devastated to miss Shaun.

I occasionally worry that I shouldn’t use words like weird in connection with this marvellous – but weird – artist and author, but he used it himself. So that’s all right, then. Shaun had a presentation on his Mac, which he described as ‘very weird stuff, somewhat autobiographical’. As Janet Smyth who introduced him said, it’s been a good year for Shaun. He won an Oscar for The Lost Thing, and then there was that pile of money from Sweden, which now that I think of it, isn’t nearly large enough for Shaun’s talents.

He usually imagines himself talking to his brother, who has a ‘radar for pretentiousness’, and this decides how Shaun describes things. His mother is responsible for the phrase ‘it’s a cultural thing’ which I have recently adopted, because it is so useful. And it’s his architect father who inspired his style of drawing.

Shaun often kicks off with Eric, the tale about the foreign exchange student. It seems they once had an ‘Eric’ themselves, and he was Finnish. That’s why he didn’t talk much. The emotion is under the surface, but it is there.

I was struck by the Tove Jansson quality of the picture that stayed as Shaun’s backdrop for most of the talk. More Finnish-ness. Shaun has travelled from dinosaurs at age three via sci-fi and Star Wars at school to books like The Arrival which took five years to make.

Let’s hope that the Astrid Lindgren award money doesn’t go towards a dishwasher. Shaun does his thinking over the washing up, and where would we be if that stopped? Also, he doesn’t like work, so tries to prune as much as he can off potential work before he even begins.

That’s my kind of person!

And so is his art. Except as he said, he leaves enough space in his work for the readers to put themselves there. So maybe it’s just that he has left what I need to make those beautiful books mine.

Tales From Outer Suburbia

It’s (slightly weird) art, with words added. And I don’t know how Shaun Tan does it. The inside of his mind must be a very ‘interesting’ place to be. He sees more than most of us, turning that seeing into marvellously odd pictures. And then Shaun adds the briefest of stories to go with those images.

Tales From Outer Suburbia is yet another wonderful (and I mean wonderful in the old way; full of wonders) book from Shaun. It’s a collection of short short stories. The story about Eric, the foreign student, is in here. Interesting seeing it differently laid out on the page. It almost changes the story.

Who would think of a wise old water buffalo for a story? Or poetry growing into a large paper ball? Just reading that turned the description of the ball into poetry for me. The weird ‘pre-wedding’ treasure hunt, featuring television sets with teeth, and presumably something Shaun thought of after seeing the traditional Just Married car with posterior dangly bits.

The hidden gardens, or the stick figures (absolutely loved the pictures for that one!), reindeer, amnesia with ice cream. Or how about having your very own intercontinental ballistic missile? It makes so much sense. So does making your own pet from leftover bits. The dog wake. Falling off the edge of your map is more of a danger than I had imagined.

Even the end is something to read. It’s so simple, the way Shaun starts and ends a book, except if it’s that easy, then surely everyone would be doing it?

My favourite story is Broken Toys. It’s enough to make you cry.