{"id":31915,"date":"2017-02-08T00:28:01","date_gmt":"2017-02-08T04:28:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=31915"},"modified":"2017-02-08T00:28:01","modified_gmt":"2017-02-08T04:28:01","slug":"review-of-the-singing-bones-by-shaun-tan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=31915","title":{"rendered":"Review of The Singing Bones, by Shaun Tan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Singing Bones<\/em><\/p>\n

by Shaun Tan<\/p>\n

Foreword by Neil Gaiman
\nIntroduced by Jack Zipes<\/p>\n

Arthur A. Levine Books, 2016. 185 pages.
\nStarred Review
\n2016 Sonderbooks Stand-out<\/a>:\t#4 Children’s Nonfiction<\/p>\n

This is a book of art. But all the art is based on fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm. Shaun Tan has created sculptures based on the tales. On each spread, there\u2019s a short excerpt from the featured fairy tale on one page, and a photograph of the sculpture on the other page.<\/p>\n

In the Afterword, Shaun Tan tells us about the sculptures:<\/p>\n

The main materials I\u2019ve used are papier-mach\u00e9 and air-drying clay, carved back and painted with acrylics, oxidized metal powder, wax, and shoe polish. The resistance of clay in particular at a small scale encourages simplicity, especially where the key tools are blunt fingers and thumbs: Faces and gestures are abbreviated, just like characters in the tales themselves. The concept of a thing also becomes more important than a detailed likeness: A fox need only be a few red triangles, a sleeping man requires no body, and a queen\u2019s face can be eroded away by the force of a single, elemental feeling: jealousy. What matters above all else are the hard bones of the story, and I wanted many of these objects to appear as if they\u2019ve emerged from an imaginary archaeological dig, and then been sparingly illuminated as so many museum objects are, as if a flashlight beam has passed momentarily over some odd objects resting in the dark galleries of our collective subconscious. Like the tales themselves, they might brighten in our imagination without surrendering any of their original enigma.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He achieves this feeling of simple forms, of the bare bones of the stories. As Neil Gaiman says, <\/p>\n

Shaun Tan does something else here: something profound. His sculptures suggest, they do not describe. They imply, they do not delineate. They are, in themselves, stories: not the frozen moments in time that a classical illustration needs to be. These are something new, something deeper. They do not look like moments of the stories: instead, they feel like the stories themselves\u2026.<\/p>\n

Here they gather for you, timeless and perfect, a mixture of darkness and light that manages to capture Grimms\u2019 stories in a way that nobody, to my knowledge, has done before.<\/p>\n

Shaun Tan makes me want to hold these tales close, to rub them with my fingers, to feel the cracks and the creases and the edges of them. He makes me want to pick them up, inspect them from unusual angles, feel the heft and the weight of them. He makes me wonder what damage I could do with them, how badly I could hurt someone if I hit them with a story.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

All of Shaun Tan\u2019s work is eerie, abstract, and creepy. But combining his images with timeless folk tales gives them whole new power.<\/p>\n

In short, you really need to see these images. Check out this book and take a look!<\/p>\n

shauntan.net<\/a>
\narthuralevinebooks.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Find this review on Sonderbooks<\/a> at: www.sonderbooks.com\/Childrens_Nonfiction\/singing_bones.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.<\/p>\n

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.<\/p>\n

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