The Bird King Shaun Tan

The Bird King

and other sketches
Shaun Tan
Windy Hollow Books 2010
ISBN 9781921136580
 

I realise that I’m seven years late mentioning this book but I have only just discovered it in one of my

favourite libraries, the Papanui Library – world-class service, there from Christchurch City Libraries - and I want to recommend it for all Shaun Tan fans.

 

The Bird King is a collection of his preliminary drawings, sketches, doodles, exercises and ‘half-baked story ideas.’ In his perceptive Introduction, Shaun Tan calls these ‘compost,’ using Paul Klee’s metaphor of the artist as ‘a tree, drawing from a rich compost of experience.’

 What follows is 123 pages of visual genius, including what Tan calls the artist ‘allowing the tip of a pencil to wander through the landscape of a sketchbook.’ Tan sees drawing as its own form of thinking, so that his images are ‘conceived as they are drawn.’ The images are imaginative, funny, thought-provoking and charming, often all in the same sketch.

My favourite is a pencil sketch of a procession of amazing creatures, including a floating rabbit, a clockwork bird, a tap-headed lizard and a mechanical device writhing with tentacles. The leader of this Bosch-ian parade is a brush-wielding boy, his loaded palette providing the only touch of colour on the double-page spread. The title is ‘portrait of the artist as a young man.’

Even more inspiring is his poster design – a sketch of a group of people happily seated on the back of a cheerful mechanical monster, soaring over a suburban landscape. Colourful flames and fireworks leap from its horns.  Its title explains everything: Reading. All the happy fliers are enthralled in books.

Other pages have doodles, page roughs, exploratory sketches, preparatory drawings and paintings, many of them easily linked to books like The Lost Thing, The Rabbits and The Arrival. Each of them is striking.

A List of Works helpfully identifies each sketch, so we know which comes from Tan’s visits to Mexico City, Dublin or even New Zealand. Of the pencil drawing on the cover, 'Innocence (the bird king),' which gives the book its title, Tan writes, ‘I have no idea who the bird king is or what he represents, but enjoy the suggestion of an unwritten mythology.’

I’m sorry this review is too late to help you buy The Bird King, but pop down to your library and borrow a copy; it will double your enjoyment in reading any Shaun Tan title.

 - Trevor Agnew

Of Thee I Sing, by Barack Obama

OF THEE I SING: A Letter to my Daughters Barack Obama, ill. Loren Long, 2010, Alfred A. Knopf [NZ agents: Random House] 35 pages, hardback, US$17.99 [NZ$42.99]
ISBN 980-0-375-83527-8

“Have I told you lately how wonderful you are?”
You should avoid being rude about books by celebrities because you never know who’s written them. Barack Obama certainly has the talent to write this book but I imagine a wide range of editorial assistance and advice was also applied. No matter, the result is an excellent children’s picture book. The text is a prose-poem, a letter to the president’s two daughters, Malia (12) and Sasha (9), directing them (and the reader) to thirteen individuals who have played an important role in America’s history.

This is very much a father’s book, representing his hope that his daughters will be able to achieve their potential. Each double-page spread follows a similar pattern. His two daughters see a young girl about their age, holding paint brushes. “Have I told you that you are creative?” asks their father. On the facing page is a stunning portrait of Georgia O’Keeffe painting a flower, after “she moved to the desert and painted petals, bone, bark.”
On another page the question is, “Have I told you that you are brave?” and the girls are looking at a young boy with a baseball bat. The facing page reveals him as Jackie Robinson who “showed us all how to turn fear to respect and respect to love.”
The adjectives and their exemplars accumulate. Albert Einstein is ‘smart,’ Helen Keller is ‘strong’ and Cesar Chavez is ‘inspiring.’

A marvellous feature of Loren Long’s illustrations is that the young people gather together on the left-hand page as each hero is revealed on the facing page. Close study shows that they are interacting. Sitting Bull admires O’Keeffe’s palette, while Martin Luther King Jr and Alan Armstrong exchange a Bible and a rocket.

Some of his pictures show superb imagination. Maya Lin is shown with her face reflected among the names on the polished granite Vietnam Veterans Memorial which she designed. Sitting Bull is a personification of the prairie and its creatures.

More than just pretty pictures and well-chosen words, Of Thee I Sing is a reminder that “America is made up of people of every kind.” The magnificent double-page illustration at the conclusion makes this point firmly with a group portrait of the 13 heroes as children, along with several rows of other young Americans, who may be other important figures of the past or even of the future. Obama’s conclusion makes the same point:
“Have I told you that they are all a part of you?
Have I told you that you are one of them,
And that you are the future?
And have I told you that I love you.”

Brief biographies provide a springboard for further research.

This is an excellent book, beautiful and thought-provoking. Its skilful and moving blend of text and pictures will encourage a generation to examine their roots and live their dreams.

This book makes it clear that Obama is proud of his daughters, but it also shows that they have every reason to be proud of him.

Trevor Agnew
3rd December 2010

Bartimaeus and the Ring of Solomon

Bartimaeus and the Ring of Solomon Jonathan Stroud, 2010, Doubleday [Random House], 403 pages, paperback, NZ$36.99
ISBN 978 0 385 61916 5

Bartimaeus is back. Or, rather he’s before. When the Bartimeus trilogy ended with young Nathan the political kid-wizard joining forces (quite literally) with Bartimaeus of Uruk, his djinni servant, it was a terrible loss to fantasy literature.

Fortunately Jonathan Stroud has taken Bartimaeus at his word and allowed him to tell us the often-hinted-at story of his days with King Solomon. It is a prequel (ghastly word) that stands alone as a comic monument to recalcitrant spirits and their struggles with the bloody-minded magicians who try to enslave them. As always Bartimaeus lards his narrative with his distinctively acid wit. “Impartial observation liberally spiced with sarcasm and personal abuse,” he calls it. Then there are his footnotes – each one a comic gem.

According to Bartimaeus – and who would doubt his word? - King Solomon not only has a ring that can command the mightiest powers, but he also has 17 of the world’s finest magicians serving him. Each magician has a nasty collection of afrits, imps, foliots, djinn, spirits and marids under their command, all of them locked in a snarling web of intrigue and enchantment.


Bartimaeus’s current master, the magician Khaba the Cruel, is using the djinni to help build Solomon’s temple, but a new task arises when the Queen of Sheba rejects Solomon’s diplomacy. Asmira, a lively young female assassin, with sharp attitudes and sharper knives, is dispatched to kill Solomon, while Bartimaeus, as always, is seeking ways to turn events to his advantage. The result is a hilariously funny satire of magical fantasy sagas, with plenty of triple- and quadruple-crossing. Asmira is a character who we’d all like to meet again, and Bartimaeus in his youth (well, second millennium) is as much savage fun as ever.

Stroud has done two good things here. He has produced a prequel that is even better than the original trilogy, and he has found a way to produce many more future (mis)adventures for Bartimaeus.

Trevor Agnew

Theodore Boone, by John Grisham

Theodore Boone John Grisham, Hodder & Stoughton, [NZ agents: Hachette] 263 pages, paperback, NZ$38.99ISBN 978-1-444-71449-4

“Most of all Theo, loved the courtrooms themselves…where lawyers battled like gladiators and judges ruled like kings.”

If John Grisham was to write a young adult novel, it was inevitable that it would be about the law. Inevitable also that there would be an adult-jacketed version, with a discreet title, for Grisham fans of mature years. (The Young Adult version carries the full title Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer, and has its own website at theodoreboone.com.)

Theo (both of whose parents are lawyers) is only 13 but already deeply involved in the legal affairs of his home town. He even has his own ‘law office’ in his parents’ law firm, giving advice to his fellow students. Theo’s familiarity with the courts leads to his class attending a murder trial, while his willingness to give legal advice puts him in a difficult, perhaps dangerous situation. It also entangles him in the court case.

Theo is a pleasant lad but other characters are lightly-sketched, while an all-seeing narrator tells readers what to think. For example, a sinister figure dominates the story. ‘Theo had heard Omar Cheepe described as “an armed thug” and a “man who enjoyed breaking the law.”’ Yet Cheepe does nothing more than look at people and Theo never even meets him. The problem seems to be that Grisham’s original plot has been cut apart to provide the inevitable sequel

Although it will be enjoyed by adults, Theodore Boone is not up to the standard of young adult novels.

Trevor Agnew

This review first appeared in Your Weekend Magazine (Fairfax) on Saturday 24th July 2010.

Time Riders: Day of the Predator

Time Riders: Day of the Predator [Time Riders 2] Alex Scarrow, Puffin (Penguin), 434 pages, paperback, NZ$19.99 ISBN 978-0-14-132693-1

Alex Scarrow has written the best young adult science fiction novels since Robert Heinlein was producing ‘juveniles’ like Citizen of the Galaxy. Time Riders: Day of the Predator – the second in a series which begun with a resuscitated Nazi Germany using flying saucers – has the ingenious concept of time agents, who are trying to stop history from being destroyed, functioning from a time-bubble base that hides by endlessly experiencing the same two days in New York: the 10th and 11th of September 2001. The agents themselves are young people recruited from unexpected disasters – crashing planes and collapsing buildings – so they are never spotted as missing.

Liam, formerly a steward on the Titanic, may not have picked up modern nomenclature yet – popsicles and Mickey Mouse are a mystery to him – but he’s intelligent and adaptable. These are survival skills for time travellers, especially when a disaster on a routine mission sees Liam fighting dinosaurs in the Cretaceous. These are smart dinosaurs which are able to learn from experience and may just possibly be capable of conquering the planet. In fact at one point in the story it seems they might have succeeded (or will succeed; time travel is tricky).

Alex Scarrow provides a handy diagram to let readers distinguish the various possible timelines but he does not write down to his readers. In fact he draws them in to the conspiracy to keep time travel a secret. Human footprints turning up in Cretaceous fossil beds are covered-up as hoaxes, complete with references to genuine conspiracy websites. There are paradoxes but he meets them head on. Not every death in this novel is forever but all of them are genuinely moving. This is because, as well as providing lots of high tech action, Scarrow has created people who engage our emotions.

Even minor characters have depth. We don’t just feel sympathy for the time agents as they struggle to save the life of Edward Chan, one the creators of time travel; we also feel sympathy for Chan’s would-be assassin, who has travelled downstream in time to destroy time travel forever. Even the bloodthirsty dinosaurs manage to tug our heart-strings as they begin to master tools and weapons (in order to rip our hearts out).

Even more remarkably, Scarrow has created a likeable robot – or rather, Becky, a support unit incorporating a genetically enhanced human body and artificial intelligence. Becky is learning about being female and human but – in one of the book’s inspired running gags – she is learning from books like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
“I am about to kiss you,” she said. “This would be an appropriate gesture of gratitude. I have references.”

The Time Riders is lively, intelligent fun which rewards readers for their prior knowledge. Reading these books may be the smartest thing a teenager can do.

Trevor Agnew
30 August 2010