Creature: Paintings, Drawings, and Reflections

BEST OF THE YEAR
The Guardian - SLJ Teen Librarian Toolbox

From the creator of The Arrival, a collection of essays illuminating his thoughts and advice for writers and artists, young and old.

Shaun Tan is one of the world's most highly acclaimed narrative artists--his stories and images are loved by countless young and not-so-young readers around the world. Drawing upon 25 years as a picture book and comics creator, painter, and film-maker, Creature explores the central obsession of this visionary artist, from casual doodles to studied oil-paintings.

Beyond sketches for acclaimed works such as The Arrival, The Lost Thing, and Tales From Outer Suburbia, this volume collects together for the first time unseen and stand-alone illustrations, each resonant with unwritten tales of their own. Detailed commentary by the artist offers an entertaining insight into the endless allure of imaginary, non-human beings and what they might tell us about our so-called "normal" human selves.

Artists, writers, students, dreamers, and anyone interested in the deeper undercurrents of creativity, myth, and visual metaphor will find inspiration in these pages.

P R A I S E

"Weird and wonderful. Tan often explores the junction between adult experience and childhood memory."
--The Sydney Morning Herald

"A strange beast: dark, whimsical and deeply moving."
--The Guardian

"Like Miyazaki, Tan engages audiences across a wide range of age and sophistication."
--The New York Times

★ "Tan acts as artist, curator, interpretive essayist, and catalog editor for a gallery of over two hundred pieces of his own works that highlight a dominant theme of animate beings--some real, most invented, but all fellow travelers through our world and through our psyches."
--BCCB (starred)

★ "This gorgeously designed coffee-table survey of his picture book, comics, exhibition and sketchbook work exposes readers to a 26-year panoply of off-kilter conceptions, in all their disquieting delight. Wondrous."
--Booklist (starred)