Shaun Tan

Shaun Tan grew up in Perth and works as an artist, writer and filmmaker in Melbourne. He is best known for illustrated books that deal with social and historical subjects through dream-like imagery, widely translated throughout the world and enjoyed by readers of all ages.

Shaun is the recipient of an Academy Award for the short, animated film The Lost Thing, the prestigious Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in Sweden and the Kate Greenaway Medal in the UK. He also worked as a concept artist on Disney Pixar’s WALL-E, providing images of a garbage covered, post-ecological landscape, vehicles and a gloomy robot underworld.

He also designed contraptions for Blue Sky’s adaptation of Dr Seuss’s HORTON HEARS A WHO, the story of an elephant trying to rescue a microscopic world while everyone else believes him to be delusional

Since 1996, much of his time has been devoted to writing and illustrating picture books, which have reached a broad readership in Australia and overseas, having been translated into several languages. Whilst described as picture books, they are not specifically children’s literature and appeal to a general audience, experimenting with different kinds of illustrated narrative.

All titles are still in print, available through most booksellers and online. Titles:

Tales from the Inner City, Cicada, The Singing Bones, Rules of Summer, Eric, The Bird King, Tales from Outer Suburbia, The Arrival, Sketches from a Nameless Land, The Red Tree, The Lost Thing, Memorial, The Rabbits, What Miscellaneous Abnormality is That? Dog, The Oopsatoreum