The Millions Interview: Shaun Tan

The work of Shaun Tan, the Australian children’s book illustrator, recalls Terry Gilliam or Tim Burton, but with a mature sad-humored control. It’s a tone that pervades The Lost Thing, an animated adaptation of Tan’s 1999 book of the same name, which won an Oscar at this year’s Academy Awards. It’s the tale of a young man in a post-industrial landscape who discovers a neglected many-tentacled playful cyborg on a beach. This month, that and two of his other older children’s books, The Red Tree (2001), a meditation on loneliness, and the John Marsden-authored The Rabbits (1998), an allegory for the plight of the Aborigine, are enjoying a wide release in America in a one-book compendium Lost and Found: Three by Shaun Tan. These are the kinds of children’s books over which you obsess over the details of the pages’ margins.
Tan, who lives in Melbourne, answered some questions by email. => http://bit.ly/mL2dXc