The Red Tree - Hardcover

Tan, Shaun

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0968876838 ISBN 13: 9780968876831

Publisher: Simply Read Books, 2003

Synopsis

Simply Read Books

About this title

About the Author

Award-winning artist and author Shaun Tan has achieved international recognition for his work, including the CBCA Picture Book of the Year Award for The Rabbits (with J. Marsden), an Honor Book Award for Memorial (with G. Crew) and The Lost Thing, an APA Design Award, an Honorable Mention at the Bologna Book Fair, three Aurealis Awards, and Spectrum Gold and Silver Awards. In 2001 he was named best artist at the World Fantasy Awards in Montreal. A graduate of the University of Washington in 1995, with honors in fine arts and English literature, he lives in Perth, Australia. The Red Tree is his fifth book (and the first published in North America).

Reviews

Grade 3 Up-An astonishing fable in picture-book format. A girl moving through landscapes of hopelessness and isolation encounters an image of hope on the book's final page. Through the weight of her sorrow, readers conclude, on both intellectual and emotional levels, that living in despair is waiting for hope. Tan's sophisticated mixed-media illustrations include fantasy and dream elements, and subtle symbolism packed together with an array of art techniques ranging from complicated cut-paper collages to Drescher-like paintings, but serious. These complex pictures send visual impressions powerful enough to cause readers to gasp as a new page is revealed. The simple, direct text ("darkness overcomes you" or "sometimes you just don't know what you are supposed to do"), often poetic ("the world is a deaf machine"), serves both as an entryway into the complicated illustrations, and as an enhancement to them. Perhaps too sophisticated in its point of view for some youngsters, this is nonetheless a book of amazing beauty, high quality, and distinguished artistry.
Liza Graybill, Worcester Public Library, MA
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Gr. 6-12. "Sometimes the day begins with nothing to look forward to . . . darkness overwhelms you / nobody understands." This picture book for older readers uses spare words and extraordinary paint-and-paper collages to articulate the hopelessness, anxiety, and fear that accompany depression. Each lavish spread follows a young, red-haired girl through wildly imagined, nightmarish landscapes: a city scene, normal except for a hideous giant fish with bloodied eyes; a violent clashing of enormous ships and tidal waves hovering over the girl crouched in a tiny boat. The text is minimal, just a few words per page, but the themes and images are sophisticated: regret over missed opportunities; information overload; the search for identity and meaning. Fragile hope comes in the form of a tiny red leaf that's barely noticeable in each composition, but finally blossoms, at the book's end, into a blazing, glorious tree. Art students, teens, and even adults will be interested in these gripping fantasies, which capture dark fears and depression's terrifying, illogical power. Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Simply Read Books
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0968876838
• ISBN 13: 9780968876831
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 32