A review by kaylielongley
Tales from Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan

4.0

Tucked in a corner of the adult section of the library but with an Australian Scholastic label, Tales from Outer Suburbia is a stunner, from cover to concept to intended audience. With no context of who's narrating and where this suburban landscape is, my wonder supercedes all normal literary qualms. Here, in outer suburbia, a visitor plants a garden in a cabinet, made from gum-wrappers and other neglected waste, making life out of trash. Here, a stick figure family literally exists, but no one knows anything about them, so they are mere speculation... until they're not. Here, scraps of poems wad up into an ever-expanding porous ball, ready to strike (or slam poem?) at a moment's notice. This majestic book encourages curiousty in finding magic in the mundane.