Tales from Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan

It was the layout, design, and surreal imagery that attracted me to the Tales from Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan. What a bonus that the 15 short illustrated stories also created a unique and pleasing journey through the extremely cool eye candy. I thought Mr. Tan did an excellent job capturing the voice and imagination of seeing suburbia through a young kid’s eye. As stated in the description the stories are “...about a strange situation or event that occurs in an otherwise familiar suburban world.” My favorites were Eric and Alert but not Alarmed. Eric is about a foreign exchanged student and I just loved the last illustration of that story. In Alert but not Alarmed, I would also be painting my backyard missile, stringing lights on it and turning it into a pizza oven. In addition, I quite enjoyed the water buffalo and the two brothers with the map. That one could so have been a story about my sister and me (especially the part on the older sibling always being right....I am the youngest).