Strangers in strange lands: An interview with Shaun Tan
Shaun Tan is the winner of the 2020 CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal for his near prophetic book, Tales from the Inner City. It’s an extraordinarily direct anthology of short fiction that explores the relationship between humanity and the animal kingdom, imagining the wild overtaking the urban – here he talks to Jake Hope about his work and winning this year’s medal.
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ISCUSSING the importance of awards following the announcement of his win, Shaun comments
“formal awards signal that your work has entered a bigger cultural conversation, that it touches a pool of other notable works, the chain of thoughts that make a society what it is, and that’s extremely gratifying, massively encouraging. As I mentioned in my Kate Greenaway acceptance speech, it’s the feeling of not being alone, and not just for the creator, but readers and fans of a work also, especially young ones.” Shaun recognises the role awards played in his early career as an artist. “It’s very hard for young writers and illustrators to be noticed enough to cover their rent, especially if they are creating unusual work. I remember winning a Children’s Book Council of Australia award for The Rabbits in my early twenties, a very odd book that drew mixed reactions (and even some hate mail) and feeling immensely relieved that it would at least rescue that work from obscurity.”
Shaun completed an honours degree in Fine Arts theory but, beleaguered by imposter syndrome, turned to science fiction illustration in his early twenties. “Writing all of those long and often tedious essays about post-modernist paradigm shifts and whatnot were actually pretty good training in trying
to articulate difficult ideas, and also communicate clearly.”
Conceptual struggle
His first picture book was with writer Gary Crew, who Shan describes as having been an early mentor. Shaun considered the ongoing influence of that collaboration, “the fundamentals of his approach, of not showing what you are telling and vice versa, continues to inform my work now. He’s a very versatile writer with a good understanding of visual images, both as a practice and historical context, having lectured on the history of illustrated literature. I was very lucky to make his acquaintance early on. And to benefit from his interest in new illustrators, to risk a few bets on them.”
Having worked in collaboration with other writers and created his own text, we discuss some of the differences in approach. “In the case of The Rabbits for instance, it set up narrative and representational problems that I would never have courted on my own, I would have thought them too hard or too risky. I really struggled conceptually with that book at first, and almost didn’t do it, but am glad I did, spurred on by memories of Animal Farm and Watership Down which had left a strong impression in my childhood. John Marsden’s text pushed my style of thinking further, following on from what Gary had espoused, and encouraged me to hunt for a personal vision.’ The Rabbits drew some criticism –
Jake Hope (@Jake_Hope) is a freelance development and children’s book consultant, and the current chair of CILIP’s Youth Libraries Group (YLG) and CILIP Carnegie Kate Greenaway Awards Working Party. He is also the author of Seeing Sense Visual literacy as a tool for libraries, learning and reader development.
www.jakehope.org.
even hate mail. ‘Australia can be a pretty racist country and that book was quite frank about its history, a long and under- acknowledged civil war between original landowners and new settlers.’
The idea of displacement is a theme that runs through much of Shaun’s work and we took the opportunity to explore this further. “The truth is that I’m not especially displaced, very much a homebody, fairly resistant to change and displacement when I think about it. My life has been relatively comfortable, from a middle-class suburban childhood in Perth to a busy but otherwise peaceful family life in Melbourne, the only migration being between two states of very little cultural difference.
“That said, I’ve always been Autumn-Winter 2020
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