Shaun Tan is an Australian author illustrator of award – winning children’s books such as The Red Tree, The Lost Thing and The Arrival. He also wins the 83rd Academy Awards for The Best Short Film (animated) and The Astrid Lindgren memorial Award in 2011.

Tan has been known as a talented artist since he was a little boy at school; he spent time writing poems and stories with drawing dinosaurs, robots and lots of science fiction objects. After graduating from University of Western Australia with Fine Arts, English Literature and History, he starts his career journey with marvelous creativity.

Shaun Tan said he often likes to think of words and images as opposite points on a battery, creating a potential voltage through a gap between telling and showing. It requires the reader’s imagination to complete the circuit. He has illustrated more than 20 books and those are including handful of titles where he was both author and illustrator. He also collaborates on animated film (Horton Hears a Who & Pixar’s Wall – E), musical and theatrical adaptations of his works, as well as producing fine art and murals.

Shaun Tan breaks down the boundaries of storytelling with his spectacular skills. He sees every new book as an experiment in visual and verbal storytelling. With his variety of meaning of artistic expression, he portrays both our searching and alienation. He combines brilliant, magical narrative skill with deep humanism and takes us beyond the world as we know it. Shaun Tan’s visual worlds engage us and make us fellow players, as though we have stumbled into someone else’s dream.
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