Tales From Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan

Suburbia has never looked better. Tales From Outer Suburbia is Australian illustrator Shaun Tan’s newest book. Having garnered world attention with his first book, The Arrival, his feet are firmly attached with a stronger book with richly inspired illustrations. The juxtaposition of images is a buffet of perpetual food for thought. Shaun takes resemblance and transforms it into newly created worlds of fancy. Preview>>

Tales from Outer Suburbia is an anthology of fifteen very short illustrated stories. Each one is about a strange situation or event that occurs in an otherwise familiar suburban world; a visit from a nut-sized foreign exchange student, a sea creature on someone’s front lawn, a new room discovered in a family home, a sinister machine installed in a park, a wise buffalo that lives in a vacant lot. The real subject of each story is how ordinary people react to these incidents, and how their significance is discovered, ignored or simply misunderstood.

Tony M.

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