Shaun Tan

 I was happy to receive the news today that the wonderful Shaun Tan 

is the recipient of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award 2011. 

I remember the emotion when I first met him through The Red Tree

at a Bologna book fair a few years ago

The jury’s citation reads as follows:

Shaun Tan is a masterly visual storyteller, pointing the way ahead to new possibilities 

for picture books. His pictorial worlds constitute a separate universe where nothing 

is self-evident and anything is possible. Memories of childhood and adolescence are 

fixed reference points, but the pictorial narrative is universal and touches everyone, regardless of age.

 Behind a wealth of minutely detailed pictures, where civilization 

is criticized and history depicted through symbolism, there is a palpable warmth. 

People are always present, and Shaun Tan portrays both our searching and our alienation. 

He combines brilliant, magical narrative skill with deep humanism.

 

ilustrations from Tales from Outer Suburbia (2008) thanks to Drawn

Tan, born in 1974, has already received a number of literary awards, 

including the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 2009 for Tales from Outer Suburbia 

and a New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books award in 2007 for The Arrival.

 The Arrival (2006)

 At this year’s Academy Awards, Shaun won the Oscar for best animated short film 

for The Lost Thing, based on his book of the same title.

 Flinch cover art

See you soon!