The library has a copy of the book that won the Australian Children's book of the year award for older Readers
Tales of Outer suburbia by Shaun Tan is a superb collection of illustrated short stories for teenagers.
I read it a few months ago. These are some reflections on it from my reading blog
Tan’s tales have a dream like quality. The stories are dotted with drawings, paintings newspaper clippings and scribbles. Every tale and picture focuses on someone feeling alien or left out or left behind. The stories are fairy light but weigh you down. You feel sad but happy. They are full of love, yearning and disappointment at how suburbia has someone how failed anyone a bit different which is really everyone. My favorite is “Alert but not alarmed" and describes how suburbia adapts to housing ballistic missiles as a favor to government. He describes and illustrates beautifully the better uses they are eventually put to , because everyone knows that
to use them would be beyond human reason.
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