Lost & Found
by Shaun Tan
Arthur A. Levine Books, 2011
Lost &Found is a collection of three short stories originally published as picture books in Australia; they are rarely, if ever, seen published separately in America. Shaun Tan is primarily an illustrator, and all three stories are distinguished by their art. These are some of Tan's earlier works, and his style is less settled than it will eventually be, but all illustrations are surreal, detailed, and show a sense of humor, even when dealing with serious topics.
The Red Tree
"Sometimes you wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait but nothing ever happens."
This is not so much a story as a poem, describing feelings of confusion, anxiety, and pointlessness. The art is acrylic and oil on paper, busy and crowded and symbolic, some very much apiece with Tan's usual art, some of it more focused on the mood, often being crowded and messy without the level of detailed imagination Tan usually presents; this is okay, it works well, and fits the text perfectly.
While I am not especially a poem-type person, I might be if more of it was accompanied by fitting illustrations. There are lines that are carried largely by the art, and art that is carried primarily by the accompanying lines. And excellent composition all around.
The Lost Thing
"So you want to hear a story? Well, I used to know a whole lot of pretty interesting ones. Some of them so funny you'd laugh yourself unconscious, other so terrible you'd never want to hear them. But I can't remember any of those. So I'll just tell you about the time I found that lost thing."
This is the story of a young man who found a thing. It looks something like a cross between a dresser and a teapot, but with a large crab-like sea creature living in it. And it's the size of a small shed. It is indeed lost, and as his parents don't want it in the house, the boy is stuck searching through a bureaucratic, uncaring city for a place where an odd thing can fit in. Eventually he finds a hidden place full of things that don't fit in, and he lives boringly ever after; we must assume the thing has a happier, or at least more interesting, existence.
The art is fairly close to what will be Tan's usual style, done in acrylic, oil, and collage on paper, with the collage mostly framing the illustrations. The drawings are more cartoon-like than most of what is seen in his later works, but is still most excellent. As I am more of a story person than a poem person, this is my favorite of the three, but that speaks more to my personality than the quality of the story or art.
It is worth noting, perhaps, that you may have encountered The Lost Thing when it made into a short animated film voiced by Tim Minchin.
The Rabbits
"The Rabbits came many Grandparents ago. At first we didn't know what to think. They looked a bit like us. There weren't many of them. Some of them were friendly."
This one is a bit different; while the art is Tan's, the words are by Australian author John Marsden. The story is about the English settling in Australia, and how that didn't turn out so great for the Aboriginal Australians. One aspect of this is a significant shift in Tan's illustration, now done in acrylic, gouache, ink, and colored pencil, and showing distinct differences in style depending on what and who is being represented. The rabbits (British) are angular and stumpy, crowded and closed, with lots of red and dark. The numbats (aboriginal) are flowing, earth-tone, and generally surrounded by wide-open spaces.
While this one stands out stylistically, it is still quite recognizably Tan's work, and as such, quite well done. It has fewer pages that I want to spend significant amounts of time looking at, but there are some standouts, and in this case the story is presumably intended to be of greater weight than the art.
Lost & Found comes with a few pages of author's commentary at the end, but the main value is simply having access to three books that are otherwise very hard to find. As you may have noticed, text does very little to convey what is special about Tan's art; as such, the titles of each work are linked to the appropriate page of the author's website. I highly recommend browsing shauntan.net for more of his art.