These stories led to Tan writing his own short stories. Tan cites Ray Bradbury as a favorite at this time. At the age of eleven, he became a fan of The Twilight Zone television series as well as books that bore similar themes. At school he was known as a talented artist. Biography Early life Īs a boy, Tan spent time illustrating poems and stories and drawing dinosaurs, robots and spaceships. Never other than itself.' įor his career contribution to 'children's and young adult literature in the broadest sense' Tan won the 2011 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award from the Swedish Arts Council, the biggest prize in children's literature.

Tan's work has been described as an 'Australian vernacular' that is 'at once banal and uncanny, familiar and strange, local and universal, reassuring and scary, intimate and remote, guttersnipe and sprezzatura. and the Western Australian Premier's Book Awards Premier's Prize in 2006. The same book won the Children's Book Council of Australia Picture Book of the Year award in 2007. In 2006, his wordless graphic novel The Arrival won the Book of the Year prize as part of the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards. Tan was born in Fremantle, Western Australia, and grew up in the northern suburbs of Perth, Western Australia. Other books he has written and illustrated include The Red Tree and The Arrival. He won an Academy Award for The Lost Thing, a 2011 animated film adaptation of a 2000 picture book he wrote and illustrated. Shaun Tan (born 1974) is an Australian artist, writer and film maker.

The Red Tree by Shaun Tan