A small child awakes to find blackened leaves falling from her
bedroom ceiling, threatening to overwhelm her. 'Sometimes you wake
up with nothing to look forward to...' As she wanders around a
world that is complex, puzzling and alienating, she is overtaken by
a myriad of feelings. Just as it seems all hope is lost, the girl
returns to her bedroom to find that a tiny red seedling has grown
to fill the room with warm light. Astonishing Australian artist,
Shaun Tan's latest creation, The Red Tree, is a book about feelings
- feelings that can not always be simply expressed in words. It is
a series of imaginary landscapes conjured up by the wizardry of his
masterful and miraculous art. As a kind of fable, The Red Tree
seeks to remind us that, though some bad feelings are inevitable,
they are always tempered by hope.
