{"id":424,"date":"2009-03-19T23:29:12","date_gmt":"2009-03-20T03:29:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/19\/review-of-tales-from-outer-suburbia-by-shaun-tan\/"},"modified":"2009-03-19T23:29:12","modified_gmt":"2009-03-20T03:29:12","slug":"review-of-tales-from-outer-suburbia-by-shaun-tan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=424","title":{"rendered":"Review of Tales from Outer Suburbia, by Shaun Tan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"outer_suburbia.jpg\"<\/em><\/p>\n

Tales of Outer Suburbia<\/em><\/p>\n

by Shaun Tan<\/p>\n

Arthur A. Levine Books (Scholastic), 2008.\u00a0 96 pages.<\/p>\n

Starred review.<\/p>\n

Truly Shaun Tan is the supreme master of the short-short story genre!<\/p>\n

This book contains fifteen illustrated stories that are strange, strange, strange.\u00a0 They are bizarre, they are haunting, and they are completely delightful.<\/p>\n

There’s water buffalo who lives on the corner and points people in the right direction.\u00a0 There’s an exchange student who leaves a surprising gift.\u00a0 There’s a boyish expedition to the edge of the world.\u00a0 All the stories are told as if someone’s matter-of-factly telling something that happened to them, once.<\/p>\n

This is the sort of book you have to share.\u00a0 I found myself exclaiming over each story, so of course I got my teenage son to read it.\u00a0 Even that wasn’t enough, as I decided I had to share it with my other son, too, so this is his present for his twenty-first birthday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As\u00a0The Arrival <\/em>did, <\/em>in many ways this book creates an entirely new category.\u00a0 Let’s see, I suppose you might call it illustrated science fiction short-short stories.\u00a0 I think I’ll just call it irresistible.\u00a0 Try it yourself — read one story and see if you aren’t too intrigued to stop.<\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tales of Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan Arthur A. Levine Books (Scholastic), 2008.\u00a0 96 pages. Starred review. Truly Shaun Tan is the supreme master of the short-short story genre! This book contains fifteen illustrated stories that are strange, strange, strange.\u00a0 They are bizarre, they are haunting, and they are completely delightful. There’s water buffalo who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,42,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-fiction","category-starred-review","category-teen-fiction-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}