A version of this piece was first published on 22nd December, 2013 in my column, Tots to Teens in The Sunday Star

RULES OF SUMMER
Author & Illustrator: Shaun Tan
Publisher: Lothian Children’s Books, 48 pages

NEVER BREAK the rules. Especially if you don’t understand them.’ That’s on the back-cover of Rules of Summer, Shaun Tan’s latest picture book. One might also say, ‘Never discount a Shaun Tan picture book. Especially if you don’t understand it.’

I hardly ever understand Tan’s picture books. Or rather they usually leave me feeling perplexed and with many questions. I once remarked to a fellow-Shaun Tan fan that his art is so beautiful that it doesn’t matter that his stories don’t quite work or make sense. At that point, I believed that Tan would not be a published author if he wasn’t such an outstanding artist. However, I’m starting to change my mind about that. Now I think that when Tan makes a whole book, providing words and pictures, you can’t have one aspect without the other. The words may be cryptic, they may not make up the usual story pattern – conflict, climax, resolution – but they offer the reader a starting point to create that structure for herself. They set the wheels of the imagination in motion, and that’s also what his art does. Continue reading →