Picturebooks: deep and dark

Picturebooks: deep and dark.

I promised I would be looking at picturebooks for older learners and so this post is dedicated to Shaun Tan, an Australian author illustrator.  I discovered his work several years ago when I was looking for articles about visual literacy in 2004, and I came across something he'd written about his work.  I've been an avid fan ever since, and once I began reading more about picturebooks I discovered everyone was!  I ordered The Rabbits first (written by John Marsden and illustrated by Shaun Tan), then finally found one of his books when on a trip to the UK in 2005 - The Lost Thing was sitting on a bookshelf in a Waterstone's, amongst the picturebooks for younger learners.  I emphasis this because picturebooks like those of Shaun Tan are not for small children, but they are often placed in the picturebook section. They fit more comfortably with graphic novels or comic books in terms of readership. I read an article in Carousel recently which looks at where to display picturebooks  for older readers, they are indeed tricky objects.   

I'd like to write about  The Red Tree -  It gave me goose bumps on the first read. I've read and reread it and each time I see different things in the elaborate illustrations.  I've also looked at the book with family,  friends and colleagues, and it always gets us talking and nattering about what we like about the book, what we find interesting and puzzling.  The latter, the puzzles, keep us going for ever.  There is so much in the visual to question and query, and discussions ensue leading to rediscoveries and a sharing of individual experiences and interpretations. This is why a book like this is so valuable for language learning.  Not only are students provided with quality visual input, but they are encouraged to talk about this visually stimulating content.  Amazon 'Look Inside' shows you the peritext and some pages.   

The front endpapers are grey, with a solitary dark grey leaf falling.  A puzzling illustration follows of a red-haired girl standing on a stool in a green pasture-like landscape talking into a megaphone with letters dropping from the end.  

These letters feature in the double spread which follows, which is the title page - a clock, (a cuckoo clock?) has risen up from a pasture-like landscape which is now yellow (have we changed seasons?) The numbers on the clock are leaves, and there's a red leaf at 12 o´clock.  (In fact there's a red leaf in every spread, which you gradually notice on returning to the illustrations.)  Letters are dropping from the bottom of the image and we can pick out the words 'The Red Tree' written in red.  If you look closely you can also find the words, 'Shaun Tan'.  There's a yellow bird pecking at the last e of tree, (is it the cuckoo from the clock?).  

The first opening spreads are just recto illustrations, the same red-haired girl is waking up, there are some leaves in her room, and a framed picture of a red leaf above her bed. There's a tiny snail on her desk and so we begin our journey through what Shaun Tan has described as 'dark moments'.    

In fact Shaun Tan describes The Red Tree like this:

"The Red Tree is a story without any particular narrative; a series of distinct imaginary worlds as self-contained images which invite readers to draw their own meaning in the absence of any written explanation. As a concept, the book is inspired by the impulse of children and adults alike to describe feelings using metaphor - monsters, storms, sunshine, rainbows and so on. Moving beyond cliché, I sought painted images that might further explore the expressive possibilities of this kind of shared imagination, which could be at once strange and familiar. A nameless young girl appears in every picture, a stand-in for ourselves; she passes helplessly through many dark moments, yet ultimately finds something hopeful at the end of her journey."

The journey  takes us through strange urban landscapes with giant fish or newspaper collages, seascapes with abandoned bottles, and moonscapes to mention just a few; we see the girl dwarfed by buildings, ships, and robotic creatures; she looks in from outside, and out from inside. She's bedraggled and belittled, confused and frightened.  Each spread leaves us questioning, puzzling and trying to make meaning, reading the un-punctuated sentences and the detailed illustrations, trying to put 2 and 2 together, and never getting 4. The book finishes with the girl opening her bedroom door and a small red leafed tree is growing, this turns into a large luminous red tree filling her room and for the first time we see her mouth and she's smiling, there's hope after all.  The back endpapers are a hot vibrant red, like the red leaves from the tree. 

Many of Shaun Tan's illustrations are works of art in themselves, they are available as prints.  The opening illustration I have shown above, of the girl with a megaphone, is called 'Dawn'.  Knowing this gives us yet another interpretation of the visual - I notice the yellow highlights in the background for example, and I think ... so the narrative begins with the day breaking, a day which begins grey but finishes with hope.   At least that's just my interpretation, we each have different ones. 

I have colleagues who have used this title with 16 to 18 year olds in English lessons to talk about the problems we have as teenagers, and recently I worked with two teachers who chose to use 'The Red Tree' with a group of 15 year olds in their English lessons.  They plan to use this picturebook during their 'citizenship' lessons, with the objective of talking about emotions and being a teenager, and they plan to focus on the pictures, not the words, as a prompt for language use.  They've also very creatively managed to get some money together to buy a small class set.    I'm very excited to hear how their experience goes.   

Picturebooks are rarely used with older students in our ELT classrooms, I leave you with the question ...  'Why?'