Tales from Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan

These are fairy tales for modern times, in which there is valor, love and wisdom—without dragons and castles. The accompanying illustrations vary widely in style, medium and palette, reflecting both the events and the mood of each story, while hewing to a unifying sense of the surreal. ...  Graphic-novel and text enthusiasts alike will be drawn to this breathtaking combination of words and images. Kirkus Star review

Tales from Outer Suburbia is an anthology of fifteen short illustrated stories based on my memories of growing up in the northern suburbs of Perth, Western Australia. 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. Shaun Tan

Stories in this book are: The Water Buffalo; Eric; Broken Toys; Distant Rain; Undertow; Grandpa's Story; No other country; The Nameless Holiday; The Amnesia Machine; Stick figures; Alert but Not Alarmed; Wake; Make your own pet; Our expedition; Night of the Turtle Rescue.

I was already familiar with many of the stories in this collection especially Eric which I love (and I gifted to a young friend named Eric). 

On a recent visit to Gleebooks a customer called in to ask about Shaun Tan and Rachel Robson mentioned Tales from Outer Suburbia to the customer. She talked about binging the whole television series over one weekend and how she really thought this production deserved a lot more attention. Now jump forward a few weeks. I was visiting our local charity book sale and spied a copy of Tales from Outer Suburbia for just AUS$2 - a mint condition paperback copy. 

If you are a casual or substitute teachers try to find a copy of this book - these short stories will create magic with any class.

The story ‘Broken Toys’ developed from a drawing of an old-fashioned deep-sea diver approaching a suburban corner deli (one near my home), which naturally raised for me the question of why he was there, and where he came from. A second idea came from the fact that as children, my brother and I often lost toys over the back fence into a  neighbour’s yard, although I’m happy to say that they never came back chopped in half as they do in the story. Shaun Tan

The real idea for this story came from an anecdote told to me by a taxi-driver one day on my way to an airport. He described an incident in Lebanon where a dud missile had somehow ended up in the middle of a suburban street, and some local people seized the opportunity to take it home, disassemble it and sell it off as scrap metal. It provoked a secondary scenario in my mind, of children finding an unexploded missile, and converting it into a ‘space rocket’ cubby-house. Shaun Tan

I am sure you have seen and read many books by Shaun Tan - he won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial award in 2011. 

Here are two quotes that resonated with me from Shaun Tan's ALMA acceptance essay:

Books offer the freedom to make up our own minds, the best stories being not at all instructive or moralizing but rather asking very well-crafted questions in an entertaining way, inspiring further creative thought. 

If my work has a collective theme, it’s something like this: ‘reality is just another strange story’. It’s something we constantly narrate to ourselves through this peculiar invention of language and pictures; a project that begins in childhood and never really ends. Great books become part of our own map of experience: through reading we grasp the power and unity of our own thought and feeling. We are invited to empathise with others, to see the world from alternative angles, to wonder what it would be like to live differently, and to not feel alone when we constantly ask: ‘what if?’ 

After you read the BOOK of Tales from Outer Suburbia switch on your television and enjoy the fantastic animated series. There are ten episodes of about 20 minutes each.

I’ve always been open to the idea of taking ideas from a book transferring and transforming them into different dramatic forms. The important thing for me is not plot or even character; it’s a certain sense of place, a certain spirit, a certain way of seeing things. Shaun Tan

Tales from Outer Suburbia is full of the bizarre, presented without fanfare: deep sea divers take a walk to the corner milk bar; a tiny pointy-headed visitor moves into the crockery cupboard; sparkling goldfish swirl through the night sky. But while there are frequent fantastical elements, the story is simultaneously firmly planted in everyday suburban life. ABC News

Read this interview with Shaun Tan and the Australian Children's Television Foundation. 

I would follow Tales from Outer Suburbia with these two (one has a page from Shaun Tan):

Ten-word Tiny Tales

Ten-Word Tiny Tales of Love

Dragonkeeper movie review

I mentioned previously that I won two tickets to Dragonkeeper - the movie is based on the book by Carole Wilkinson. You might like to watch the trailer.  Here are two reviews by young movie fans. I do hope this book is in their school library. It is wonderful that both boys now want to read the book:

Review One

I liked this movie from the start when we found out that baby Ping had special powers. I knew she was going to be an important character. It was exciting when the dragon catcher held Ping and the dragon egg over the cliff edge. My favourite part was when the dragon catcher drained Ping’s  energy to become more powerful. It was sad at the end when Danzi was injured but it ended in a happy way when Kai, the baby dragon hatched and cuddled up to Ping. I think Ping will look after Kai and be a mother to him.

I think I would enjoy reading this book.   Luca 9yrs

Review Two

I loved the background music and the animation the most. The colours were soft and magical. The dragons didn’t appear to be scary at all. Their voices were soft and they were friendly. I think little kids could watch this movie without being too scared. I liked the special effects used when Ping first dreams of the dragons.

My favourite part was the journey of Ping and the dragon, Danzi when they went searching for the dragon egg. The scene with the broken bridge was exciting, especially when Ping used her powers to mend the bridge. This is when we first realise how strong her powers are. Ping was very brave when she used her powers to help defeat Diao and rescue the egg.

I’d really like to read the book now so I can compare it to the movie. I think there might be more detail in the book.    Theo 11yrs

If you are an parent or carer and you want to know more about the themes in this movie which is rated here in Australia as PG take a look at this review from Children and Media Australia. You can see images from the movie here. 

Here is the webpage for Carole Wilkinson.

You can read a sample chapter from Dragonkeeper here. There are six books in the Dragonkeeper series including the prequel - Dragon Dawn:

The London International Animation Festival Sydney Opera House 2025

 

Image from Gunpowder (France)

The full title of this event is 

The London International Animation Festival - 
celebrating a world of animation for kids

Blurb from the Sydney Opera House: In need of an escape from the Summer sun? Join us for the return of the London International Animation Festival for kids. Our Playhouse has been transformed into a cinema for you and the family to enjoy the best independent animation from across the globe. From stop-motion, claymation, 2D and 3D CGI and everything in between, get comfy in your seats and ready to travel to faraway lands and mysterious planets. Grab some popcorn and get involved in the fun free foyer animation play activations before or after your movie session as we roll out the red carpet for this big screen celebration. This carefully curated programme for our littlest film critics contains the most wonderful animated short films from all around the world. There will be talking animals, heartwarming friendships, fun adventures and wondrous tales to spark everyone's imagination.

Let's unpack this - International - yes - there are films from France, Hungary, UK, Japan, Slovenia/Croatia, Belgium, Germany, USA, Russia, New Zealand, and Lithuania. Celebrating the world - no - Who is missing? There were no films from Australia this year but we do have talented animators as evidenced by the new film release of Magic Beach. There was only one film from South America, and only one from Japan with none from other parts of from Asia. Also nothing from Middle Eastern Countries. I mention them because in past years the Opera House hosted a brilliant film festival for kids called "Little Big Shots" and some of the best short films (live action and animation) at that event were from Iran and Afghanistan. Sadly, I think "Little Big Shots" has now closed but it did run for more than ten years especially in Melbourne.

I was also surprised most of the films were made before 2020. I wonder if this an older selection on loan by the Opera House from the UK Festival. I did read that in the UK The London International Animation Festival screens around 300 independent animated films of every technique, style and genre across London venues for 10 days from late November to early December every year for all ages including a children's selection. 

Anyway, putting all of that aside I did thoroughly enjoy the nine films in the section designed for children aged 6-10. Many also have fabulous music to accompany these mostly 'silent' stories. 

Tickets and session times here (17-19 January 2025). Over the three days, four sessions are available per day 

• 10am & 12pm: Recommended for ages 2 - 6
• 2.30pm & 4.30pm: Recommended for ages 6 - 10
• 7pm: Recommended for ages 10 - 14

Here are the films I saw for ages 6-10 from the 2025 event:

• Spring Jam is based on birds and music and especially Brandenburg' Concerto no. 4 in G major.
• Hedgehog (this is the whole film on YouTube) is a very poignant film featuring a young boy who loved hedgehogs but who had a very dysfunctional and even violent home situation. 
• Gunpowder (trailer) (whole film here) is actually about tea - Phileas travels to China to find some tea and while he is there he encounters a very dangerous dragon.

• Good Heart features a cave family where mum seems to do all the tasks. Finally, everyone has to move into the cave to escape the rain. 
• In Cat Lake City (trailer) a mother duck and her two ducklings keep taking over her towel when all she wants to do is to lie beside the swimming pool. 
• Senses sets up two scenes side by side - one full of colour and the other black and white. Everything is okay until a brightly coloured and slightly crazy frog arrives.

• How much does the cloud Weight was an interesting silent film with a terrific twist in the final scene. 
• Mr Night has a Day off is a clever exploration of night and day. When Night touches things they turn black. We all laughed when he touched a small blue car and it turned into a very large black car!

There was also a bonus film about a fish that needs to find a container of water called Water Path for a Fish or Camino de Agua Para un Pez (El Salvador).

You can see the 2024 selection here. If this topic interests you here is the 2023 kids event held in London.

Magic Beach by Alison Lester

Magic Beach is now a movie BUT ... begin with the book - then see the movie - you and your young child will really appreciate this experience so much more if you are familiar with the book by Alison Lester.

After reading the iconic book by Alison Lester, nine children and a dog find themselves on the titular Magic Beach. They explore caves, build giant sandcastles, poke around rock pools and converse with sea creatures. This is where their animated imaginations begin… James dives with horses in the waves, sandcastles are built and destroyed in terrible wars, pirates smuggle treasure, and dreamtime serpents fly through the sky and shed their scales. The dreams of these children are limitless and reflect the uninhibited nature of being a child at the beach. The children awake from their animated imaginations to find themselves back in real life, but the beach will be in their heart forever. Movie Insider

One of our local cinemas hosted an event this week to launch the movie of Magic Beach. Sadly the advertising was a little misleading. 

Join Alison Lester, author of the classic children’s book Magic Beach and director Robert Connolly (Paper Planes, The Dry) for a special meet & greet preview screening of the new movie MAGIC BEACH. You’ll have the chance to say hello with your family and hear them introduce the film.

I expected a Q&A session between Alison Lester and the movie director - Robert Connolly. They did talk very briefly but I had so many questions and I left with these unanswered. The event was billed as a 'meet and greet' and I wrongly assumed this meant some sort of chat or interview. Here are my questions:

• Were the movie animators given a choice of which page from this 32 page picture book they would like to explore?
• Did the director have a list of animators or a list of animation styles he wanted to explore for this book? The movie uses many different forms of animation - such as digital, Claymation, and stop motion.
• Were the beach scenes filmed at the real 'Magic Beach' which is in Victoria?
• Apart from the general popularity of the book, which was written over thirty years ago, why did the director or screen writer select this book?
• What were the decisions that had to be made considering this book is not a really a narrative - it is just a set of connected scenes explored with gentle illustrations and a lyrical text.
• What went into the decision making to alter the order of scenes in the book?
• Did the director have to compromise or make changes to his original plans so the movie could be given the all-important G rating?
• Was Bigsy paid for his performance? 

Movie description: Take a trip with the ones you love through a unique mix of live action, entwined with extraordinary animated adventures that bring you to a dreamy seaside world where anything is possible. Featuring timeless characters, MAGIC BEACH is a captivating blend of reality and fantasy that inspires people of all ages to feel the sand beneath their toes and find wonder in the world around them.

In this radio interview Robert Connolly talks about Magic Beach. And also in this ABC television interview.

Alison Lester said: Magic Beach, published in 1990, features 10 children playing by the ocean and their rich imaginary adventures that have them fighting dragons, riding horses through the waves and spying on smugglers. Like all Lester’s children’s books, it leaves plenty of room for readers and listeners to use their own imaginations, which was the same approach she wanted in the movie adaptation. “I think generally we tend to fill our kids’ lives up with stuff so that they don’t have any time to be bored and imagine,” she says. “And it’s such a precious thing to be able to do that, just to take the time to be outside and letting it happen instead of everything just being fed into you.” Sydney Morning Herald

You can view the official trailer here.

Ten animators bring Alison Lester’s beloved children’s book to the screen, crafting a magical mixture of live action and animation that is destined to become a family favourite.

Animators credits

Susan Kim Danta        animator/director: Mermaid's Tale

Pierce Davison            animator/director: Castle V Castle

Jake Duczynski            animator/director: Gilay Gabinya

Emma Kelly                 animator/director: The Horses

Anthony Lucas             animator/director: The Smugglers

Simon Rippingale        animator/director: Henry's Dream

Kathy Sarpi                 animator/director: Tangerine Boat

Susie Shapones            animator/co-director: Princess Belinda

Marieka Walsh            animator/director: Princess Belinda

Eddie White                 animator/director: Kingdom of Fish

Lee Whitmore              animator/director: Doggy Day Dreaming

Animation by Marieka Walsh

Princess Belinda

Anthony Lucas

The Smugglers

Simon Rippingale

Henry's Dream

I discovered the child who plays the part of the pirate who finds a treasure box in a cave is the grandson of Bert and Patti Newton and he is making his movie debut.

It is wonderful that young children can now enjoy this book in three formats - as a book (even as a board book for very young children); as a stage play (by Finegan Kruckemeyer) and now as a movie. I love also really appreciate that the movie allows children to experience so many different forms of animation. And this might be a first movie which is more of an experience or a series of vignettes than an actual continuous story or narrative. 

It was interesting to see the response when the movie director Robert Connolly asked these three questions:

• Who has read the book? Nearly every hand went up.
• If you are an adult who heard the book as a child? 
• If you are a child, put up your hand if this is your first movie experience. Note this is a longer movie than I expected at 76 minutes. I would say it is perfect for children aged 5+.

It was good to view the movie with a huge audience of young children. I think everyone gasped when the real Bigsy appeared on screen - but he is looking so old now. 

Read a review here

Image Source: Storybox Library

You can see a full list of all the books by Alison Lester here.

30th Anniversary edition

Paper Son by Julie Leung illustrated by Chris Sasaki

 

Full title: Paper Son: The inspiring story of Tyrus Wong, immigrant and artist.

Take a look at these images from Bambi (Disney films).

"Bambi became a groundbreaking film. Audiences and critics gushed about the art - how it communicated so much by showing so little, how you could almost smell the mossy green of the woods and hear the rushing water of the brook. But in the end, Tyrus was credited only as a background artist."

One of my most favourite discoveries in recent years is the wealth of picture book biographies for young readers. Yes, they are written about famous and familiar people but the best ones allow readers to discover someone unknown.  I knew nothing about the art in Bambi or the artist who did this fabulous work. 

Tyrus Wong travelled to America from China when he was just nine years old. Tyrus arrived in the US at the time of a Federal law called the Chinese Exclusion Act. Tyrus had to change his name and memorise the contents of his forged identity papers. His real name was Wong Geng Yeo but he became Look Tai Yow and then later when he started school in Sacramento he was given a new name - Tyrus Wong. Tyrus excelled at art and so his father, who worked in very lowly jobs, saved enough money to send Tyrus to the Otis art institute. Tyrus did not abandon his Chinese heritage. He studied art from the Song Dynasty and he learned "mountains could look in the distance with a few jagged lines." 

Tyrus eventually found a job at the Disney studio but he worked as an in-betweener which meant the tedious painting of the same scene over and over with only tiny changes. Tyrus heard the studio were making Bambi and he saw a wonderful opportunity. He painted soft watercolour landscape scenes. Walt Disney loved them. Sadly Tyrus was not credited for his work but he never stopped painting - ceramics, silk scarves, murals and menus. He died in 2016 aged 106! In his later years he loved to make kites and you can see images of bright kits on the end papers of this book. Read more here. 

Here is a splendid video of the whole book. I was happy to see this presenter included the end papers and beautiful title page. This book was the winner of the American Library Association's 2021 Asian/Pacific American Award for Best Picture Book! Chris Sasaki is the perfect illustrator for this book. Here are some other books by Julie Leung.

I found another picture book about Tyrus:

Benjamin the lonely dragon by Marc Craste

 

"Once there lived a sad little dragon named Benjamin. He was sad because he didn't have any friends. None of the other dragons in his small village would play with him. You see Benjamin had a problem - he was afraid of fire."

The plot line for this book is very familiar.  The dragon has no fire, he leaves home in disgrace, meets a new friend, performs a heroic deed, finds his fire and returns home a hero.

The special feature here is the tender relationship between Benjamin, the dragon and Roger his little hedgehog friend. The best demonstration of this relationship comes when Benjamin calls Roger - Rog and Roger called Benjamin - Ben.  I know this sounds simple but this was a moment in the story which, pardon the pun, warmed my heart.

"Then, just as Benjamin thought he would collapse from cold and tiredness, he noticed a small, dark shape on the ground ahead. Peering through the snow, he saw that it was indeed Roger, but his relief turned to despair. His little friend was covered in ice and snow, and had turned blue with cold."

This book is a treasure found by my friend from Kinderbookswitheverything at a recent charity book sale. The copy she found was only $2 and even though this book was first published in 1994 this copy is in mint condition which means the publisher used good paper and the book has been stored carefully. This book is long out of print but I am happy that this copy will now go into a library where it can be borrowed and enjoyed by a whole new set of readers.  But I need to put on my detective hat. Who is Marc Craste and who are Murray Child and Company - the publisher from Collaroy? I had no idea a publisher had a business in Collaroy in the 1990s. This suburb is very near my home here in Sydney. This is especially odd because Marc Craste lives in the UK.

So now we need to complete the circle. Marc Craste illustrated Varmints which written by Helen Ward the illustrator I featured yesterday! Marc Craste works in the film industry as an animator. His movies include: Varmints, Jo Jo in the Stars, Stuck on a Sunday, Neighbors, Guinness and Seconds From Greatness. If you have time click the link for Varmints - it is an amazing short film reminiscent of The Lost Thing by Shaun Tan. Or you could watch the two minute trailer. Here are some details:

Adapted and directed by Marc Craste, Varmints is a 24-minute film based on the award-winning book of the same name by Helen Ward and illustrated by Craste, that tells the story of one small creature's struggle to preserve a world in danger of being lost forever through recklessness and indifference. A crew of 35 people worked in three countries over a two year period to make the film, and an original score by Icelandic composer Johann Johannsson and sound design by Adrian Rhodes complete the picture.

I had a copy of Varmints in my former library but I will confess I did not read it (you can't read every book). I now need to look for this. I can see this book would be perfect to pair with another Helen Ward book - The Tin Forest.